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37 



THE 



ADIRONDACK; 



OR 



ICiff in t||f '83nnM. 



/ 



BY 



J; T. HE ADL E Y, 

AUTHOR OF " WASHINGTON AND HIS GENERALS," ETC 



.^' 




^^^riTu^^S 



NEW YORK: 
BAKER AND SCRIBNER 

14.'S NASSAU STREET ANT) 30 PARK ROW. 

1849. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the 3-ear 1849, by 

J. T. HEADLEY, 

[n the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 

District of New York. 



C. W. BENEDICT, Stereotyper, 

201 William street, cor. of Franlforl. 






H. J. RAYMOND, ES^. 

My Dear Raymond : 

Though you failed to accompany 
me in my trip to the Adirondack Region, yet I often 
thought of you in my long marches and lonely bivouacks. 
Filling at that time a large place in my memory, and 
always a much larger one in my heart, permit me to in- 
scribe these letters to you as a token of my regard and 
esteem. 

Very sincerely and truly yours, 

J. T. HEADLEY. 

New York, March 31, 1849. 



LIST OF PLATES. 



FACING 

I. Distant View of the Adirondack, - ... - -title 

II. Lake Sanford, Ingham, - 49 

III. Lake Golden, -..--- Ingham, - - 55 

IV. Adirondack Pass, . , - , - Ingham, - 69 

V. Lake Henderson, Gignoux, - 95 

VI. View on Forked Lake. 169 

VII. Raquette Lake, Hill, - - 201 

VIII. Lake Schroon. - . , , Dnrande, - 265 



CONTENTS. 



I. 

Up the Hudson— In the "Woods— Trout Fishing— A Queer Fish, ... 18 

11. 

Dandy turned Farmer— Trout Fishing, &c.— Christening a Barn, . . 20 

III. 

" Driving Trees"— Benighted in the Woods, 28 

IV. 

A River in the Forest— Life— " Driving the River," 86 

V. 

Forestvp-ard— Dinner Scene— Preparations to ascend Mount Tahawus, . 44 

VI. 

Ascent of Mount Tahawus— A Man Shot— A Hard Tramp— Glorious Pros- 
pect—A Camp Scene, 53 

VII. 

Sagacity of the Hound— The Indian Pass— Precipice Two Thousand Feet 
High. 67 



CONTENTS 



VIII. 

The Hunter Cheney— Encounters with a Panther— Deadly Struggle with a 
Wolf— A Bear and Moose Fight— Shoots Himself .... 75 

IX. 

Game — Moose — Crusting Moose — A Catamount — Chase between a Deer and 
a Panther— A Bear caught in a Trap, 85 

X. 

Lake Henderson— A July Day— A Sunset, and Evening Reverie, . . 94 

XI. 

Tahawus with the Clouds below it— A Hard Tramp— A Plank Bed on the 
Boreas River— A Sorry Company Travelling after Breakfast, . 99 

XII. 

A Thunder Storm— A Solution of Life, 108 

XIII. 

A Ride through the Forest— A Lean Dinner— Cheney's Cousin— Swimming 
A Lake with Horses. 112 

XIV. 

Camping Ground — Mitchel the Indian Guide — Trout fishing on a Large 

Scale— Night 121 

XV. 

A Camp Scene in the Morning— A Shot at an Eagle— A Deer Chase, . . 131 

XVI. 

A Magnificent Prospect— Fourteen Hours without Food, .... 148 

XVII. 

Long Lake— A Fearful Night— A Gale in the Woods— Man Bitten by a 
Rabbit, 161 



C U N T E N T S . 



XVIII. 

Trouting— A Duck protecting her Young by Stratagem-^Sabbath in the 
Forest, ... 160 

XIX. 

Long Lake Colony— A Looa — Forked Lake, 169 

XX. 

Shooting a Deer— Modern Sentimentalists— The Influence of Nature, . . 176 

XXI. 

Floating Deer— A Night Excursion— Morning in the Woods. . . .184 

XXII. 

Forest Music, . 194 

XXIII. 

Raquetie Lake — Number of its Trout — A Hunter-s Love for an Eagle- 
Fierce Struggle between an Eagle and a Salmon, 201 

XXIV. 

Description of Raquette Lake— Abundance of its Fish— Lake Eldon— Its 
Queer Discovery— A Man whipped by an Eagle— A Hunter without 
Feet, 213 

XXV. 

Sights and Sounds— Beach and Woods— A Visit of Thirty Miles made by a 
Woman, 227 

XXVI. 

Moose Lakes—" Murderer's Point "—A Grave in the Forest— Trouting— A 
Family of Thirteen Girls— Riding "Bare Back"— A Curious Horse 
i^ace. 234 

XXVII. 

Lost ic the Woods— An Old Indian and his Daughter— Farewell to Jlitchell— 
Musquitoes and Black Flics 24S 



CONTENTS. 

XXVIII. 

Schroon Lake— A Nut for Sportsmen— Woods on Fire, 356 

XXIX. 

Lumbermen— A Student and Hunter outwitted by a Professor— A Philosophi- 
cal Husband — A Prospective Widow looking out for her own interest, 264 

XXX. 

Odds and Ends— Trial of a Thief in the Backwoods— New Mode of Report- 
ing an Election— Paradox Lake— Von Raumer and his Statements, . 272 

XXXI. 

Autumn a Painter— Manner of Working, 280 

XXXII. 

Directions to the Traveler, 286 



PREFACE 



The letters in this volume embrace two different sum- 
mers which I spent in the forest. An attack on the brain 
first drove me from the haunts of men to seek mental 
repose and physical strength in the woods. The deci- 
sion of an able physician, which was that I " must go 
where a printed page could not meet my eye, and I should 
be forced to take constant exercise in the open air, or 

■ " impelled me to undertake at first what 

two years after I prosecuted with pleasure. 

Thus much for the reasons which first induced me to 
penetrate the pathless and unknown wilderness of central 
New York. 

I publish the results of my two trips, because I wish 
to make that portion of our State better known ; for it 
bears the same relation to us that the Highlands do to 
Scotland, and the Oberland to Switzerland. That rela- 



11 PREFACE. 

lion will be acknowledged yet, and every summer will 
witness throngs of travelers on their way to those wild 
mountains, and gurpassingly beautiful lakes. No such 
scenery is to be found in our picturesque country, and none, 
that in my opinion, will match it this side of the Alps. De- 
scriptions cannot, of course, give an adequate idea of it, as 
Prof. Emmons, in his w^ork embraced in the great Geologi- 
cal Pveport of the State says : 

" It is not, however, by description that the scenery of 
this region can be made to pass before the eye of the imagi- 
nation ; it must be witnessed, the solitary summits in the 
distance, the cedars and firs which clothe the rocks and 
shores must be seen ; the solitude must be felt or if it is 
broken by the scream of the panther, the shrill cry of the 
northern diver, or the shout of the hunter ; the echo from 
the thousand hills must be heard before all the truth in the 
scene can be realized." 

After such a glowing description emboded in our State 
Reports, I think there is little danger that anythine: T shall 
say will be considered as exaggerated. 

Some may object to the want of gravity, or as others will 
term it, " dignity," in these letters. All that I can say, is, 
they are a faithful transcript of my feelings and experience, 
and hence the fault if it be one, has no remedy but in 
dishonesty. 

In the woods, the mask that society compels one to wear 



PREFACE. Ill 

is cast aside, and the restraints which the thousand eyes 
and reckless tongues about him fasten on the heart, are 
thrown off', and the soul rejoices in its liberty and again be- 
comes a child in action. The ludicrous incident, the care- 
less joke, the thrilling story, the eager chase, are all in 
place in the forest, and as harmless as the sports of the 
deer. 

I hate hypocrisy in an author — writing not as he feels 
but as he knows bigoted or narrow-minded men think he 
ought to feel — moralizing on paper where he never thought 
of it in fact, and giving us theological disquisitions on doc- 
trinal points 

" When the bosom is full and the thoughts are high,'* 

with the floods of excitement and rapture which some won- 
drous and glorious spectacle has awakened. Nature and the 
Bible are in harmony — they both speak one language to the 
heart — yet in the wilderness there is no formality in the ex- 
pression of one's feelings. A man 

" Laughs when he's merry, 
And sighs when he's sad," 

without thinking or caring how it would appear in the 
saloon or grave assemblage. 

The engravings are from original drawings by the dis- 
tinguished artists Messrs. Ingham, Durand, Gignoux, and 



IV PREFACE. 

Hill of Vermont, to whom I feel deeply indebted for their 
kindness. These give a value to the work I could not 
otherwise claim for it„ 

I am sorry that I could get no sketches of some of the 
romantic and beautiful scenery of the more central regions 
but no artist has ever yet ventured into them. At some 
future day there will be a collection of those views made, 
which will not be surpassed in beauty by any in Europe. 

The Moose Lakes described in one of the letters, T have 
never seen, but a friend of mine, who has once been through 
the wilderness with me, furnished the material, and for the 
sake of uniformity, I used it as my own. 



GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY. 



To give the reader some idea of the central portion of 
New York, in which the scenes of this work are laid, and 
through which I traveled ; and that he may not regard 
it mere child's play to penetrate it, I would say that 
across it either way is about the distance from New York 
to Albany — varying from a hundred to a hundred and fifty 
miles. It is the same as if the whole country from New 
York to Albany, and extending, also, fifty miles each side 
of the Hudson, was an unbroken wilderness, crossed by no 
road, enlivened by no cultivation, not a keel disturbing its 
waters, while bears, panthers, w^olves, moose and deer 
were the only lords of the soil. 

Imagine such a tract of country, about the size of Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut put together, most of which lies a 
neglected waste, through which you must make your way 
with the compass, sustained by what your own skill can 
secure, and you will obtain a faint conception of the Adiron- 
dack region. And yet, you will hardly get a correct one, 



VI GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 

because there would not enter into it the gloomy gorges 
and savage mountains that everywhere roll it into disorder. 
I shall furnish, however, the best description, by giving an 
extract from a letter of Professor Farrand N. Benedict, of 
Vermont University, whose able report in the Geological 
Work of our State, and reports, also, to the Senate, on the 
capabihties of this section for slack water navigation, have 
been of equal service to science and to the practical man. 

In a letter to me, which the reader will acknowledge to 
be written with singular clearness and beauty, he' says : 

" The northern section of New York, embracing the 
county of Hamilton, and the most of the counties of Essex, 
Clinton, Franklin, St. Lawrence, Herkimer, Lewis, War- 
ren, and Fulton, has hitherto resisted the march of improve- 
ment, and still remains, with a few solitary exceptions, an 
unsubdued forest. Until recently, little has been known of 
its physical resources, and of its adaptedness to the wants of 
man in his civilized state. Regarded as an unproductive 
waste, it has left the vague and transient impression on the 
mind that it answered well enough, the only purpose of its 
existence, to constitute a barrier between the Mohawk and 
St. Lawrence Rivers, and to prevent the waters of Lake 
Ontario from carrying desolation with them into the valley 
of Champlain. It seems until lately to have failed to 
awaken that interest in its behalf, to which it is justly en- 



GE^EUAL DESCRIPTION. Vll 

titled, in view of the recent developments of its mineral, 
and even of its agricultural capabilities. 

This section of country, which is frequently denominated 
the Plateau of Northern New York, is washed at its wes- 
tern base by the Black River and Lake Ontario — at its 
northwestern by the St. Lawrence — at its eastern by Lake 
Champlain — and at its southern by the Mohawk River. 
Settlements and civilization have advanced from live to 
twenty-five miles up the valleys and slopes of this elevated 
table, where they are met by the nearly uninterrupted wil- 
derness of the interior. The general surface of tliis region 
as indicated by the lakes and streams, and in many in- 
stances, especially in the western part, of the extensive val- 
leys which they drain, is nearly a horizontal plane, with a 
medium elevation above tide of 1700 feet. This elevated 
surface is attained by a rapid ascent from its base, in a dis- 
tance of some ten or twenty miles, except where the grade 
is occasionally reduced, and the distance proportionably in- 
creased by valleys and streams. The slope is the most 
rapid from the Black River and Lake Champlain, declining 
more gently to the Mohawk, and still more so towards the 
St. Lawrence and the low country of Canada. 

" This table is divided transversely into two nearly equal 
portions by a broad valley of variable width, which meets 
the shores of Lake Champlain at Plattsburgh. The valley 



Vlli GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 

extends in a southwesterly direction up the Saranac River 
to the beautiful cluster of lakes of that name — thence with 
no intervening ridge it passes up the Raquette River, 
through Long and Raquette Lakes ; and thence in the 
same general direction, and with no opposing barrier, down 
the Moose River and its chain of picturesque lakes, and 
terminates in Oneida County, near Boonville. This valley 
is remarkable for its extent— being about 150 miles in 
length — ^for its nearly uniform direction, although it is 
formed by the basins of three different systems of waters — 
for the productiveness of its soil in the upper sections of its 
course — and especially for its almost unparalleled line of 
natural navigation. 

" The western portion of the table, or rather that which 
is situated west of this valley, presents a varied and pic- 
turesque, though not a mountainous surface. The Adiron- 
dack Mountains are seen towards the east, with their bare 
and rocky summit, dim in the distance, projecting their 
spurs clothed with black forests to the shores of this central 
line of waters. Proceeding westwardly from this line, the 
physical aspect of the country undergoes a marked and im- 
mediate change. The mountains are reduced to hills of 
moderate elevations; and, instead of being covered with 
rugged and sterile peaks, their rounded summits display a 
luxuriant growth of valuable timber. They appear to be 
disposed without much conformity to any general system of 



GENERAL DESCRIPTION. IX 

arrangement. They are frequently solitary ; and whenever 
they can aggregate in groups or chisters, their positions are 
determined by the local arrangements of the neighboring 
waters. Between the lakes, or rather ponds, of this uni- 
form section, which are disseminated in singular precision 
over the whole plateau, the surface rises gently from the 
shores into swells of arable land, excepting the southern de- 
clivities which are often abrupt and precipitous. 

The eastern part of the plateau, embracing a tract of 
country about 50 miles wide and 110 miles in length, and 
terminated by the Raquette Valley on the Avest, is decidedly 
Alpine in its physical aspect. Its apparently confused wil- 
derness of mountains is found, on close examination, to be 
disposed in ranges nearly parallel to the valley above men- 
tioned. These terminate in successive bold and rocky 
promontories on the western shore of Lake Champlain. 
The chains increase in elevation as they approach the inte- 
rior, until they attain their greatest altitude and grandeur 
in the most western one of the series. This has a northern 
termination at Trembleau Point, and thrusts its southern 
extremity into the bed of the Mohawk at Little Falls. It 
consists of an extended aggregation of mountain masses, 
resting on bases that are elevated nearly 2000 feet above 
tide. Many of these throw their bare and pointed summits 
of rock to the perpendicular altitude of about a mile above 
the surface of the ocean. The vastness of their elevations, 
1* 



X GENERAl. DESCRirTION. 

the aliiiost endless variety of their forms, their confused and 
disorderly arrangement, and the deep forests that are inter- 
rupted only by the lakes at their bases and the rocks and 
snows of their summits, invest the eastern half of the table 
with unrivalled solitude and sublimity." 

This vast mountain chain rises and sinks along the hori- 
zon in such colossal proportions that one imagines himself 
in the Alps. The highest peak of the Catskill is only three 
thousand and some hundred feet in height, yet here are 
summits rising out of the bosom of forests nearly twice its 
altitude. Mount Tahawus is over a mile high, while 
Whiteface, Nipple Top, Mount Seward, Santenoni, Dix's 
Peak, Mount McMartin and Mount Mclntyre, rise each 
five thousand feet into the heavens. Shall I mention Owl's 
Head, Mount Emmons, Schroon Mountains, North River 
and Boreas Mountains, three thousand feet high ; or Bald 
Peak and Raven Hill, and a host of others two thousand feet 
and upwards 1 Why, the Catskill range, majestic as it is, 
is a dwarf beside these gigantic mountains. From the top 
of one of them, you see for nearly foiir hundred miles in cir- 
cumference. To wander among them is the hardest toil 
that a forest life presents. Without roads, your only re- 
liance the guide and compass, you are compelled to wade 
streams, cross marshes, and climb over vast tracts of 
fallen timber, and at last, when night comes on, pull your 
own couch from the fir trees around. Tf it were not that 



GENERAL DESCRIPTION. XI 

a chain of lakes extends the entire length of this wilderness, 
cutting it in two, it would be impenetrable. Along these 
sheets of water — from one to another, and around rapids 
and cataracts, the adventurer rows his boat or carries it on 
his head. I have made this statement that one may see at 
the outset to what kind of a region I wish to introduce 
him. 



UP THE HUDSON IN THE WOODS TROUT FISHING A 

QUEER FISH. 



Backwoods, June 23. 



Dear H- 



The steam is up— the pipes are spitting forth in 
furious disgust volumes of vapor — ^the last bell is ring- 
ing, and amid the clatter of carriages, the shouts of 
men and clouds of steam, we are off to the centre of 
the Hudson, and, stretching away, like a gallant steed, 
rapidly divide the water northward. 

As I stand on the deck and think of the broad, deep 
forest and its rushing streams, a feeling of freedom 
steals over me, I have been a stranger to, for months. 
The chains of conventional life begin to fall off, link 
after link, and I fancy I feel my blood take a new 
spring already. This chasing after health, though, is 
;i discouraging business. To spend half of one's life 



14 THE ADIRONDACK. 

in keeping the other half from going out, is not, I am 
convinced, the chief end of man — still, it must some- 
times be done, and then the pathless woods, the 
long and steady stretch up the mountain side and 
the coarse fare, are better than all the ''poppies and 
mandrigoras" of the world to '' medicine" not only 
the body but the mind. Your Saratoga water and 
Nahant bathing and Rockaway dinner tables will do, 
perhaps, for healthy men, cripples and women. But 
for the reduced system that needs tone and manliness 
given it, strong physical exercise is demanded. 

I passed through Saratoga Springs without stop- 
ping even to dine, but compensated for the neglect 
over some trout at Glen's Falls. Arriving at Lake 
George just before sunset, I engaged a man to carry 
me on, some twenty miles farther that evening. "We 
halted a few moments at twilight at a lonely tavern 
on an elevated ridge, made still more desolate by 
the self murder of the proprietor, the year before, 
over whose grave a whip-poor-will was pouring its 
shrill and rapid note. Soon after, we began to enter 
the Spruce Mountain, where, for miles, not even a hut 
appears to cheer the sight. In the meantime, the sky 
became overcast, and night came down black and 



A NIGHT JOURNEY. 15 

threatening. The darkness at length grew so impene- 
trable that we could not see the horses, nor even the 
wagon in which we rode. Up long hills, and down 
into deep gulfs, with the invisible branches sweeping 
our faces at almost every step, we traveled on, seeing 
nothing but utter blackness, and not knowing but the 
next moment we should stumble over a precipice, or 
be tumbled down the slope of a " dugway." My driver, 
in the meantime, got excessively nervous — ^he had 
never traveled the road before, and this feeling his 
way, or rather allowing his horses to feel it without 
venturing the least control over their movements, 
seemed to him not the safest mode of procedure, and 
so after muttering awhile to himself various rather 
forcible expressions, he stopped and got out. Going 
to the heads of the horses he commenced leading them. 
I supposed at first that something was the matter with 
the harness, and said nothing ; but soon finding my- 
self moving on in the darkness, I called out to know 
what he was doing. '' I'm afraid," he replied, ." to 
ride, it is so dark, and I'm going to lead my horses." 
Just then, there came a bright flash of lightning, re- 
vealing the still and boundless forest on every side, 
and throwing into momentary, but bold relief, shivered 



16 THE ADIRONDACK. 

trunks and blackened stumps, and last though not least 
important, the horses, with my driver at their head. 
An instantaneous and utter blackness followed — fall- 
ing on everything like a mighty pall — and then came 
the sullen thunder, swelling gradually from the low 
growl into the deep vibrating peal that shook the hills. 
It was my turn to feel nervous now, and the idea of 
walking out a thunder-storm at midnight, in these 
mountains, was not to be entertained a moment. 
Unfortunately, T can bear the worst fate better than 
suspense ; so calling out in a tone not to be mis- 
taken, I said, " come, get in and drive on, and 
drive fast, too — if we break down, we will bivouack 
the rest of the night under the wagon, but as for 
going at this snail's pace, and a thunder storm gather- 
ing over our heads, I will not permit it." With a grunt 
at my rashness, he clambered in and started on. 
" Come," said I, " whip up, neck or nothing, I 
can't stand this." (Jetting into a smart trot, we 
passed rapidly along, expecting every moment to 
feel the shock that should stop us for the night, 
or find ourselves describing the arc of a circle, 
down some declivity, the bottom of which, we 
could only speculnte upon. Ever and anon came 



FIRE FLIES. 17 

the sudden lightning, rending the gloom, succeeded 
by the rolling, rattling thunder-peal, that made the 
horses jump, not to mention our own pulsations. 
Brushed every few steps by an overhanging branch, 
as if struck by a mysterious hand, we kept resolutely 
on — the good horses picking their way like Alpine 
mules, and the road proving itself to be far better 
than our fears. 

At length, just as the heavy drops began to fall, we 
emerged into a little valley, in which nestled a rude 
village, the meadows of which seemed to be one mass 
of phosphorescence. The fire flies hung in countless 
numbers over the surface, forming almost a solid body 
of light. The effect was indescribable ; all around 
was Egyptian darkness, except that single level spot 
on which the incessant flashes made a constant, yet 
ever tremulous light. At first, it seemed an illusion, 
so fluctuating and confused did everything appear ; 
but as the eye, aided by the judgment, got accus- 
tomed to the scene, it became a beautiful creation, 
made on purpose to cheer the night and lessen the 
gloom that overhung the world. 

All ! how delicious it is after such a ride to stand 
under a roof and hear the big drops dashing against 



18 THE AI>1R0NDACK. 

the windows and sides of the house, and the thunder 
pealing harmlessly without; you laugh at the ele- 
ments which you had feared, and feel as if you had 
baffled an enemy whose ravings now were impotent 
and foolish. The rudest room is then pleasant, and 
the hardest bed soft as down. A delightful calm 
succeeds the turbulence of feeling, and you are at 
peace with all the world. 

T will not weary you with an account of my next 
morning's ride, nor of the thorough drenching I 
received. 

Arriving at a clearing, I had hardly swallowed some 
dinner before I donned my India-rubber leggings and 
plunged into a splendid stream near by, after trout. 
The very first cast I made, I took one, and kept 
taking them, till, at the end of two hours, I had fifty 
fine fellows. The best one of all, however, I lost. I 
had approached with great caution a noble pool, made 
by a rapid current that shot along a ledge of rocks, 
then spread out into an open basin. Seating myself 
carefully on a narrow shelf, I threw my fly, and 
moving it slowly in an oblique direction across the 
stream, soon saw a great fellow rise to the surface. 
Til 1 twinkling, he was b(»itko(] : hnt just nt Hi-if 



TROUT FISHING. 19 

moment I heard a tremendous splashing in the water 
above me, accompanied by something halfway be- 
tween a grunt and a groan. I was startled, and 
turning my eyes in the direction of the tumult, saw 
my companion floundering in the water. With a 
short crooked pole, he had been endeavoring to mount 
a smooth, slippery rock and cast his cord-line into a 
hole where it looked as if trout mii2rht lurk. Just as he 
was fetching back his rod with a tremendous swing, his 
foot slipped and over he rolled into the swift current, 
making the splashing that had startled me so. His 
hat was otf and his long hair streamed o^'er his face, 
as now up and now down he struggled to steady his 
uncertain footing. At length, he brought up against 
a rock, and "thunder and lightning," were the first 
words that escaped his lips, as he looked around to 
determine his whereabouts. He was a capital subject 
for a picture, as he thus stood, bareheaded, hanging 
on the rock, and muttering to himself. Between the 
fright and the laugh, I lost my trout, but I have made 
my mark on him and will have him yet. 



II 



DANDY TURNED FARMER TROUT FISHING, &C. CHRIS- 
TENING A BARN. 

Backwoods, June 28. 

Dear H : 

There is not a wilder region in our country than 
the northern parts of "Warren and Hamilton Counties. 
An almost unbroken wilderness stretches away from 
the Adirondack Mountains, from a hundred to a hun- 
dred and fifty miles across. Imagine such a wilder- 
ness in the heart of New York State, in which you 
may wander month after month without stumbling on 
a clearing. There are places in it never yet trod by 
the foot of a white man. It is not merely an unculti- 
vated country, but a succession of ragged mountains, 
darkened with pine and hemlock — ploughed up with 
ravines and rendered barren by rocks and swamps. 
An over-wrought brain has driven me into these soli- 
tudes for rest and quiet — ^my only companions being 



A CLEARING. 21 

my rifle and fishing rod. Wc talk in New York of 
going into the " country.'''' But let Saratoga be ex- 
changed for " Long Lake," Nahant for " Indian 
Lake," and New Rochelle for the gloomy shore of 
Jesup's River, and our fashionables would get an 
entirely different idea of the " country,''^ True, it is 
lonely at first — after being accustomed to the din and 
struggle of Broadway and Wall street to sit as I now 
do, with a wide forest, climbing the steep mountains, 
to bound my vision, and the little clearing around me 
black with stumps, coming up even to the door of the 
log house. All day long, and not the sound of a single 
wheel, but in the place of it the cawing of crows, the 
scream of the woodpecker, and the roar of a torrent 
dashing over the rocks in the sullen forest below. 
The very stumps have a forlorn look, and it seems a 
complete waste of time and music for the birds to 
sing, having no one to listen to them. It must be they 
do it to hear the echo of their own voices, which these 
wild woods send back with incredible distinctness and 
sweetness. But if one is not entirely spoiled, he soon 
attunes himself to the harmony of nature, and a new 
life is born within him. To most of us, life has — as 
the G-ermans would say, an " Einseitigkeit," (a one- 



>iZ THE ADIRONDACK. 

sidedness). The " Fielseitgkeit," (the many-sided- 
ness) few experience. Ah, it is this " Einseitigkeit," 
that renders all reform so difficult ; and bigotry and 
prejudice so irresistible. Men must experience the 
" Fielseitgkeit," to know it, but circumstances chain 
them to the " one-sided" view, and so we go stumb- 
ling on in the old paths, or like an old mill horse round 
and round in the same circle, stereotyping anew the 
groans and complaints of our fathers. Here a man 
will toil for forty years and die poor, while in the city 
a successful speculation often ensures a life of idleness 
and luxury. Industry then is not always the sure 
road to wealth. 

But I will not weary you with an essay on social life, 
I will only say that it is a poor argument which meets 
our complaints, from the pulpit and press, viz., 
" After all, happiness is about equally divided." This 
maxim is believed, because it is the converse of a true 
proposition, which is, '' one man is about as miserable 
as another." That is, the laws of Nature and Heaven 
are such that he who accumulates to live a life of idle- 
ness is made as miserable as the man he impoverishes 
in order to do it. Thus, it is true, that happiness is 
pretty equally divided, because the misery the present 



CI-DEVANT DANDY. 2S 

covetous, grasping spirit works is pretty equally di- 
vided. 

These thoughts work in me here in the woods as I 
lean on my rifle, and look on that sturdy backwoods- 
man making the forest ring with his axe as he devotes 
himself to a life of toil and ignorance. All, our religion 
but half performs its work. It simply turns the icild 
animal into a domestic one, but leaves him an animal 
still. It does not elevate him, so that the poor can be 
intelligent, refined, and spiritual. He is still doomed 
to toil, toil, for the mere animal nature. Religion was 
designed by its great Author to accomplish more than 
this, '^ix^/f 

My stopping place is at the house of an old friend, 
on the frontier of this wild region, who, when I last 
knew him, was called a New York dandy. Designed 
by his friends for a profession, he broke away from his 
studies and entered upon a mercantile life. In the 
crash of 1837, he went down with the multitude. 
Land, scattered here and there over the country, was 
all that was left him to fall back upon, and he resolved 
to turn farmer. I could hardly believe my eyes, when 
I saw what a rock and mountain farm he was on. 
A.S I came up to the door, he was engaged in filling a 



24 THE ADIRONDACK. 

straw bed for his baby — queer occupation this, for a 
ci-devant dandy. The next morning as he drove off to 
the woods with his oxen, one would never have dream- 
ed he had once sauntered up and down Broadway. 
His wife, a refined and intelligent woman, at first sunk 
under this change, but rallying her good sense, she has 
adapted herself to her situation, and now makes butter, 
&c., like a good house-wife. My friend seemed happy, 
but I thought it must be assumed, and so I asked him 
how this compared with New York. " I am happier 
here," he replied, " I prefer this life to that of the city." 
The delicate young merchant is spreading into the 
broad-shouldered working man. I confess I admired 
him, and the second day I told him I would help him 
work, if on the succeeding one he would play with me. 
He agreed to this arrangement, and so I doffed my 
coat and went into the field with him. My appetite 
for the plain dinner was a trifle beyond what is termed 
good, and my slumbers that night deep as oblivion. 

The next morning I claimed the fulfillment of his 
promise, and he shouldered his long limber ash pole 
which he had cut from the forest, and peeled to make 
it lighter, and we entered the dark hemlock forest that 
overhangs the "trout-brook," and were soon in the 



TROUTING. 25 

midst of rare sport. By the way, pay no regard to the 
list of fancy flies which sportsmen often make so much 
aJo about. The red and black hackles are the best for 
our latitude all seasons of the year. With this short 
episode, follow me in fancy, down the stream, packing 
the bright spotted trout away into my basket, until wo 
come to a dark overhanging precipice. Here the 
stream flows in a broad sheet against and under the 
mountain, and disappears from sight to appear again far- 
ther on. This precipice, shooting at an angle of 45 de- 
grees over the current, turning it back on itself, and 
forcing it downward, forms a deep, black pool, covered 
with the foam-bubbles which circle and dart like live 
creatures in the eddies. There, on the very edge of the 
eddy, I have cast my fly. It has hardly moved before, 
look I what a noble fellow makes the water foam as he 
throws an arch into the air, his white belly gleaming 
like a silver arrow as he goes. Snap goes the line, and 
he vanishes. AJi, he was a fat one, and that last fling 
of his by which he cleared himself, made every nerve 
in me tingle. 

But I will have his mate. Quickly noosing another 
snell, I drag again the deep pool, and there the other 

shf)ots — the beauty, and T have him ; I cannot play 
9 



26 THE ADIRONDACK. 

him — the bushes and flood-wood and rocks, are too 
thick, — and he flounders like a sturgeon — I must lift 
him or lose him. My slender rod almost doubles, and 
quivers with the load ; but the good stick holds, and 
the fellow is landed. There is absolutely terror in his 
great black eye as he lies and pants on the rock. I 
can't help it, my speckled beauty, it's a world where 
we prey on each other. Beside, I have had nothing 
but fried pork for three days, and I already gloat in 
imagination over your salmon-colored flesh. I have 
gone but half a mile, and let us see, I have forty. 
That will do for to-day, and we will turn home. 

Passing through a clearing on a side-hill, on our way 
back, we came upon a ham raisings called here a 
^' bee," because all the neighbors are invited to assist. 
The rough frame was up, and a man was sitting on 
the ridge pole, hallooing, " Here's a frame without a 
name, and what'll ye call it ? Here's a frame without 
a name, and what'll ye call it ? Here's a frame with- 
out a name, and what'll ye call it ?" — '■^Side-hill drag''' 
was shouted back from the sturdy group below. It 
was christened with a hurra, and up went two old 
drag-frames to the plates where they were left dang- 
ling in the air. I could not but smile at this curious 



CHRISTENING A BARN. 27 

christening, yet the man was as proud of his wit, as 
the politician of his toast on some gi-eat festive occa- 
sion, and had as good reason to be for aught I know. 

Yours truly, 



Ill, 



"driving trees" ^BENIGHTED IN THE WOODS. 

Indian Lake, June 30. 
Dear H : 

Did you ever fall a tree ? If not, the experiment is 
worth your while — for the consciousness of power it 
awakens, and the absolute terror it inspires, as the 
noble and towering fabric at length yields to your as- 
saults, amply repay the labor. The first stroke into 
the huge trunk sends a slight shiver through all the 
green top ; but as stroke follows stroke, the old king 
of the woods seems to despise your puny efforts, and 
receives the blows in silent contempt. But as fibre 
after fibre is severed, and the heart is at last reached 
and pierced, a groan passes up through the lofty stem. 
Then comes a cracking, as if the very seat of life was 
broken up, and the frightened thing sways and stag- 
gers a moment, as if to steady its enormous bulk, then 



DRIVING TREES. 29 

bows its tall head in submission, and without another 
effort, and with a shock that shakes the hills around, 
falls to the ground. There he lies with all his great 
arms crushed under him, stretched a lifeless corse 
along the earth. His brethren nod and tremble a mo- 
ment above him, as if they felt the overthrow, then 
all is still again. Thus the other day I brought a 
brave old hemlock to the ground, and when I saw the 
lofty green mass first begin to sway, and then heard 
the snapping and rending of the tough fibres of the 
trunk, a feeling of terror stole over me. This a back- 
woodsman would doubtless call transcendentalism, if 
he knew the meaning of the term, but there is no 
transcendentalism in swinging a heavy axe for an hour 
to fetch one of these sturdy trees down. 

But felling a single tree is a small matter compared 
to a process called here " driving trees''' ? Don't im- 
agine a whole " Birnam" forest on the move '' for 
Dunsinane," like a flock of sheep going to market ; but 
sit down with me here on the side-hill, and look at that 
opposite mountain slope. Just above that black fal- 
low, or as they call it here "foller," there, in that 
deep grove, five as good choppers as ever swung an 
axe, have made the woods ring for the last three 



30 THE ADIRONDACK. 

hours with their steady strokes, and yet not a tree has 
fallen. But, look ! now one begins to bend — and 
hark, crack ! crack ! crash ! crash ! a whole forest 
seems falling, and a gap is made like the path of a 
whirlwind. Those choppers worked both down and 
up the hill, cutting each tree half in two, until they 
got twenty or more thus partially severed. They 
did not cut at random, but chose each tree with 
reference to another. At length a sufficient number 
being prepared, they felled one that was certain to 
strike a second that was half-severed, and this a third, 
and so on, till fifteen or twenty came at once with that 
tremendous crash to the ground. Here is labor-sav- 
ing without machinery. The process is called " driv- 
ing trees, ^^ and it is driving them with a vengeance. 

A day or two since I made an engagement with an 
Indian to go out at night, deer hunting. "We were 
sure, he said, of taking one. Having nothing in the 
meanwhile to do, and the pure air and bright sky 
tempting a stroll in the solemn woods, I shouldered 
my rifle and started off. After proceeding about a 
mile, thinking of anything but game, I was suddenly 
aroused from my reverie by the spring of a deer just 
ahead. I looked up, and there, with an arching neck 



A SHOT. 31 

and waving tail, stood a beautiful doe. Quick as 
thought she darted away, but when she had gone 
about 25 or 30 rods stopped again. At first I could 
not see her, for she had halted behind a clump of 
bushes ; but at length I observed a reddish spot, about 
the size of the crown of my cap, between the leaves. 
I hesitated to shoot, for I knew it was the broadside, 
and one of my small bullets (my rifle carries 83 to the 
pound) planted there, might not fetch her down till 
she had run ten miles. However, it was my only 
chance, so I took a steady aim, and fired. A wild 
spring into the open forest told me she was hit, and as 
she leaped madly away, the tail she carried a moment 
before like a plume, was hugged close to her legs. 
Hence I was not surprised when I came to where she 
had stood, to find large drops of blood on the leaves. 
I took the trail and followed on. It was slow work, 
without a dog, and how far I went I know not, but I 
did not give it up till the increasing darkness blotted 
the traces from my sight. I then turned to go back, 
but, alas, had not the slightest idea of the course I 
had traveled ; and the sun being now down, and the 
high trees blotting out everything but a little space of 
sky overhead, I was utterly at a loss which way to 



S2 THE ADIRONDACK. 

go. I pushed on, however, trusting more to luck 
than my own knowledge or sagacity. But night hav- 
ing at length come down in earnest, every step was 
taken at random. Heavy and disheartened, I sat down 
on a log, and (thanks to my Alpine match-box,) soon 
struck a light. It was 9 o'clock. AVell, thinks I to 
myself, it's only a little over six hours to daylight, and 
I may as well stop and wait as to be knocking my 
head against these trees without getting any nearer 
home, nay, perhaps, farther oft'. Looking around, I 
espied a knoll with a rock on it. Here, kindling a fire 
to keep off^ the musquitoes and black flies that were 
devouring me at a rate that would soon leave nothing 
for the wolves to lunch on, I sat down and waited for 
the leaden hours to wear away. It seems a very 
trifling thing when we read about it, to pass a night 
in the woods, especially when you know that the 
beasts of prey which roam the forest, dare not attack 
you — it is a trifling thing to a backwoodsman, but just 
try it yourself once. I do not affirm that you will be 
frightened ; but as Lugarto was accustomed to say, you 
will " be nervous.'''' It was warm, and there was no 
danger ; neither was I lost, for I knew a walk of an 
hour or two in the mornins? would brinsr me out, vet I 



AN UNCOiM PORTABLE NIGHT. 33 

could not sleep. Bryant says in his Thanatopsis, that 
it should be a great comfort to a man in death, to 
know that he " lies down with kings and the powerful 
of the earth." I don't know how it may affect one 
" in death^'' but I do know that in vigorous health, 
it requires more than the mere reflection that the 
"kings and the great ones of the earth" are snoozing 
on their couches of down, to make one sleep sweetly 
in the solemn woods without a friend near him. If I 
felt inclined to doze, the snapping of the fire, or the 
stealthy tread of a fox or hedgehog, would startle me 
from my disturbed slumbers — and there stood the tall 
trees in the fire light, their huge trunks fading away 
in the gloom like the columns of some old cathedral 
at twilight. Once, I could have sworn I saw a bear, 
and was on the point of shooting, but finally concluded 
to take a fire-brand in one hand and my rifle in the 
other, and go towards it, when lo I it turned out to bo 
a hlack stump. I let it sleep on, and went back to my 
fii*e, determined to have a nap. It was all in vain, and 
yet I had slept soundly in places where I felt at the 
time there was infinitely more danger than here. I 
had slept lashed to a bench when the storm was spring- 
ing our masts, and the sea falling in thunder on the 



34 THE ADIRONDACK. 

deck of our staggering ship — I had slept amid the 
*' Alps and Appenines," nay, worse, in the cabriolet of 
a French diligence, beside the yelling conducteur. I 
had slept on the hard floor, and beside living and dead 
men, but I could not sleep here. There was some- 
thing so awfully solemn and mysterious in that mighty 
forest — in the rustle of the night breeze through the 
tops of the hemlocks, and the flutter now and then of 
a bird disturbed on its perch, that my heart beat audibly 
in my bosom. Just as my nervousness began to be 
particularly annoying, there came a flash of lightning, 
followed by the low growl of distant thunder. This 
was something I had not calculated upon, and I said 
to myself, " Well, there is a prospect of my trying 
Preissnitz's system now, for there will be cold bathing 
in plenty before morning, and my diet is spare enough, 
heaven knows, for I haven't even a red-squirrel to roast 
for my supper. I shall be thankful if one of these 
rotten hemlocks does not have the rubbing of me 
down after my bath." Just then the blast swept 
through the forest like the roar of the sea, and all was 
still again. Another flash, and as I live, there stood a 
man amid the trees ; I waited in breathless suspense 
for a second flash, but the tread of feet prevented the 



A WELCOME VISITOR. 35 

necessity, and the next instant the Indian (a civilized 
one) whom I had engaged to go deer hunting with me, 
approacbsd. The amount of affection I at that mo- 
ment entertained for the red-skinned gentleman, 
would, I think, satisfy my wife, if I am ever fortunate 
enough to have one. He had seen the light of my lire 
above the trees, and supposing I was lost came after 
me ; and I assure you it was the most profitable short 
journey he ever made. It turned out that I was not 
two miles from the settler's house from which I had 
started. We reached it about 2 o'clock, and I slept 
on my straw bed that night without thinking of " the 
great ones of the earth." 

Yours truly. 



IV, 



A RIVER IN THE FOREST LIFE — 

Backwoods, June 6. 

DearH : 

Did you ever witness a log driving ? It is one of 
the curiosities of the backwoods, where streams are 
made to subserve the purpose of teams. On the 
steep mountain side, and along the shores of the brook 
which in spring time becomes a fiery torrent, tearing 
madly through the forest, the tall pines and hemlocks 
are felled in winter and dragged or rolled to the brink. 
Here every man marks his own, as he would his 
sheep, and then rolls them in, when the current is 
swollen by the rains. The melted snow along the ac- 
clivities comes in an unbroken sheet of water down, 
and the streams rise as if by magic to the tops of tlieir 
banks, and a broad, resistless current goes sweeping 
like a live and gloomy thing through the deep forest. 



A FOREST rivj;r. 37 

The foam bubbles sparkle on the dark bosom that floats 
them on, and past the boughs that bend with the 
stream, and by the precipices that frown sternly down 
upon the tumult ; while the rapid waters shoot onward 
like an arrow, or rather a visible spirit on some mys- 
terious errand, seeking the loneliest and most fearful 
passages the untrodden wild can furnish. I have 
seen the waves running like mad creatures in mid 
ocean, and watched with strange feelings the moonlit 
deep as it gently rose and fell like a human bosom in 
the still night ; but there is something more mysteri- 
ous and fearful than these in the calm yet lightning- 
like speed of a deep, dark river, rushing all alone in 
its might and majesty through the heart of a vast 
forest. You cannot see it till you stand on the brink, 
and then it seems utterly regardless of you or the 
whole world without, hasting sternly forward to the 
accomplishment of some dread purpose. 

But such romance as this never enters the heart of 
your backwoodsman. The first question he puts him- 
self, as he thrusts his head through the branches and 
looks up and down the channel, is — " Is the stream 
high enough to run logs ?" If so, then fall to work : 
away go the logs, one after another, down the moun- 



38 THE ADIRONDACK. 

tain, and down the bank, with, a bound and a groan, 
and splash into the water. 

The heavy rains about the first of July, had so 
swollen the stream near which I am located, that all 
thoughts of fishing for several days were abandoned, 
and the log drivers had it entirely to themselves. So, 
strolling through the forest, I soon heard the continuous 
roar that rose up through the leafy solitudes, and in a 
few moments stood on a shelving rock, and saw the 
dark, swift stream before me, as it issued from the 
cavernous green foliage above, and disappeared with- 
out a struggle in the same green abyss below. I 
stood for a long time lost in thought. How much 
like life was that current in its breathless haste — how 
like it, too, in its mysterious appearance and depar- 
ture ! It shot on my sight without a token of its birth- 
place, and vanished without leaving a sign whither it 
had gone. So comes and goes this mysterious life of 
ours — this fearful time-stream, sweeping so noiselessly 
and steadily forward. And there, where that bubble 
dances and swims, now floating calmly though swiftly 
along the surface, and now caught in an eddy, and 
whirled in endless gyrations round, and now buffeted 
back by the hard rock agaiiist whose side it was cast, is 



THE LIFE-STREAM. 39 

another life symbol. Such am I, and such is every man 
— bubbles on the dread time-stream — one moment mov- 
ing calmly over the waters of prosperity — the next, 
caught in the eddies of misfortune, till, bewildered and 
stunned, we are hurled against the rocks of discourage- 
ment. Yet, ever afloat, and ever borne rapidly on, we 
are moving from sight, to be swallowed up in that vast 
solitude, from whose echoless depths no voice has 
ever yet returned. Life, life, how solemn and mys- 
terious thou art ! I could weep as I lean from this 
rock and gaze on the dark, rushing waters — thought 
crowds on thought, and sad memories come sweep- 
ing up, and future forebodings mingle in the solemn 
gathering, and emotions no one has ever yet ex- 
pressed, and feelings that have struggled since time 
began, for utterance, swell like that swollen water over 
my heart, and make me 'inconceivably sad here in the 
depths of the forest. 

How long I might have stood absorbed in this half 
dreamy half thoughtful mood, I know not, had I not 
heard a shout below me. Passing down, I soon came 
to a steep bank, at the base of which several men were 
tumbling logs into the stream. I watched them for 
some time, and was struck with the coolness with 



40 THE ADIRONDACK. 

which one would stand half under a huge embankment 
of logs, and hew away to loosen the whole, while 
another with a "handspike"* kept them back. Once, 
after a blow, I saw the entire mass start, when " Take 
care ! take care ! " burst in such startling tones from 
my lips, that the cool chopper sprung as if stung by 
an adder ; then, with a laugh at his own foolish fright, 
stepped back to his place again. The man with the 
" handspike" never even turned his head, but with a 
half grunt, as much as to say " G-reen horn from the 
city," held on. It was really an exciting scene — the 
mad leaping away of those huge logs, and their rapid, 
arrowy-like movement down the stream. At length I 
threw off my coat, and laying my gun aside, also 
seized a '* handspike," and was soon behind a log, tug- 
ging and lifting away. I was on the top of a high bank, 
and when the immense timber gave way, and bounded 
with a dull sound from rock to rock, till it struck with 
a splash into the very centre of the current, my sud- 
den shout followed it. The first plunge took it 
out of sight, and when it rose to the surface 
again, it stood, for a single moment, perfectly still in its 
place, except that it rolled rapidly on its axis — the 
^- A wooden lever. 



41 

next moment it yielded to the impetuosity of the cur- 
rent and darted away as if inherent with life, and 
moved straight towards a precipice that frowned over 
the water below. Recoiling from the shock, its head 
swung off with the current, and away it shot out 
of sight. 

The stream gets full of these logs, which often catch 
on some rock or projecting root, and accumulate till a 
hundred or more will be all tangled and matted to- 
gether. There they lie rising and falling on the un- 
easy current, while a driver slowly and carefully steps 
from one to another, feeling with his feet and " hand- 
spike," to see where the " drag" is. Wlien he finds it, 
he loosens, perhaps with a blow, the whole rolling, 
tumbling mass, and away it moves. Now look out, 
bold driver, thy footing is not of the most certain kind, 
and a wild and angry stream is beneath thee. Yet see 
how calmly he views the chaos. The least hurry or 
alarm and he is lost : — but no, he moves without agi- 
tation, — now balancing himself a moment, as the log 
he steps upon shoots downward, then quickly passing to 
another as that rolls under him, he is gradually worlv- 
ing his way towards the» shore. He has almost suc- 
ceeded in reaching the bank, vv^lion the whole floating 



42 THE ADIRONDACK. 

mass separates so far, that he can no longer step from 
one to another, and after looking about a moment, he 
quietly seats himself astraddle of one, and darts like a 
fierce rider down the current. 

These logs are carried twenty and thirty miles in 
this way, passing from small streams to larger ones, 
through lakes and along rivers, and are finally brought 
up at the wished-for spot by poles across the river, 
which stop their further descent. Several different 
men club together to drive the stream, and here they 
pick out each one his own, by the mark he has placed 
upon it, as you have seen a farmer select his sheep 
in a pen containing several flocks. 

This marking logs like sheep, was entirely new to 
me, and somewhat droll. I could imagine the owners 
at the place of rendezvous, (i. e., of the logs,) selecting 
them in somewhat the following manner: one cries 
out, " well, neighbor Jones, is that your log ?" '' Yes." 
" How do you know ?" " Oh, it has my mark — crop- 
ped on both ears and slit in the right ; and here is one 
belonging to you with a bob-tail, and a knot in the 
forehead." 

This "driving the river,". as it is called, is one of 
the chief employments of your backwoodsmen in 



DIFFERENT YET THE SAME. 43 

spring time, and it is curious to see what an object of 
interest the river becomes. Its rise and fall are the 
chief topics of conversation. So goes the world — New 
York has its objects of interest — ^the country village its 
— and the settler on the frontier his — each one is filled 
with the same anxieties, hopes, fears and wishes — 
overcome by the same discouragements and misfor- 
tunes, and working out the same fate ; man still with 
that mysterious soul and restless heart of his, greater 
than a king, and immortal as an angel, yet absorbed 
with straws and maddened or thrown into raptures by 
a little glittering dust. 



V. 



FORESTWARD-^ — ^DINNER SCENE PREPARATIONS TO ASCEND 

MOUNT TAHAWUS. 

Backwoods, July 10, 1846. 

Dear H : 

It will be a long time before I am again by a post 
office where I can get a letter to you. If you wish to 
know the pleasure of seeing a newspaper from New 
York, bury yourself in the woods for three or four 
weeks, where not a pulsation of the great busy world 
can reach you, nor a word from its ten thousand 
tongues and pens meet your ear or eye. The sight of 
one, then, fresh from the press, putting in your hands 
again the links of that great chain of human events 
you had lost — re-binding you to your race, and re- 
placing you in the mighty movement that bears all 
things onward, is most welcome. You cannot con- 
ceive the contrasts, nay, almost the shocks of feeling 
one experiences in stepping from the crowded city into 



FOREST LIFE 45 

the dense forest where his couch is the boughs he him- 
self cuts, and his companions the wild deer and the 
birds; or in emerging again into civilized life, and 
listening to the strange tumult that has not ceased in 
his absence. One seems to ha-ve dreamed twice — nay, 
to be in a dream yet. Yesterday, as it were, I was 
walking the crowded streets of New York ; last eve- 
ning, in a birch-bark canoe, with an Indian beside 
me, nearly a day's journey from a human habitation, 
sailing over a lake whose green shores have never been 
marred by the axe of civilization, and on whose broad 
expanse not a boat was floating, but that which guided 
me and my companions on. For miles the Indian has 
carried this canoe on his head through the woods, and 
now it is breasting the v/aves that come rolling like 
fluid gold from the west. The sun is going to his re- 
pose amid the purple mountains — the blue sky seems 
to lift in the elastic atmosphere — the scream of the 
wild bird fills the solitude, and all is strange and new, 
while green islands untrodden by man greet us as we 
steer towards yonder distant point, where our camp-fire 
is to be lighted to-night. G-lorious scene — glorious 
evening ! with my Indian and my rifle by my side — 
skinimino- in this canoe alono^ the clear waters, how 



46 THE ADIRONDACK. 

far away seem the strifes of men and the discords of 
life. To-night my couch of balsam boughs shall be 
welcome, until the cloudless morn floods this wild 
scene with light. 

But I find I am getting on too fast. To begin at 
the beginning — I started with four companions, from 
where I had been for some time fishing, for a stretch 
through the wilderness, to ascend Mount Marcy, as it 
is foolishly called, — properly Mount Tahawus, — and go 
through the famous Indian Pass. Here there are no 
mule paths, as in Switzerland, leading to the bases 
of mountains, whence you can mount to the summits ; 
but all is woods ! woods ! woods ! The highest and 
most picturesque of the Adirondack peaks lie deep in 
the forest, where none but an experienced guide can 
carry you. To reach Mount Tahawus, you must 
come in from Caldwell or Westport, about thirty miles, 
in a mail wagon, and then you have a stretch of 
some forty miles through the woods to the Adiron- 
dack Iron Works. There is but one road to these 
Works, where it stops, and he who would go farther 
must take to the pathless woods ; indeed, it was 
made solely for these iron quarries, by the company 
which owns them. 



A DINNER SCENE. 47 

"Well, here we are, in the heart of the forest, five of 
us, bumpmg along in a lumber wagon over a road 
you would declare a civilized team could not travel.* 
Now straining up a steep ascent — now whang to 
the axle-tree between the rocks, and now lying at an 
angle of forty-five degrees, and again carefully lifting 
ourselves over a fallen tree, w^e tumble and bang 
along at the enormous rate of two miles an hour. 
By dint of persuasion, the use of the whip, and a 
thousand " he-ups," we have acquired this velocity, and 
been able to keep it for the last seven hours. But 
man and beast grow weary — it is one o'clock, and as 
the forest is but half traversed, a dinner must be 
had in some way. In three minutes the horses are 
unhitched, and eating from the wagon — in three more 
a cheerful fire is crackling in the woods, and our 
knapsacks are scattered around, disgorging their con- 
tents. Here is a bit of pork, here some ham, tongue, 
anchovy-paste, bread, &c., &c., strung along like a 
column of infantry, on a moss-covered log, and each 
one with his pocket-knife is doing his devoirs. We 
eat with an appetite that would throw a French cook 
into ecstacies, did he but shut his eyes to our bill of 

• It has been improved since, and is now quite good. 



48 THE ADIRONDACK. 

fare. Dinner being over, B ^n, a six-footer, one of 

the finest specimens of a farmer and gentleman you 
will meet in many a day, has lighted his pipe, and is 
sitting on. the ground with his back against a log, 
deep in the columns of the Courier and Enquirer 
which I received the day before we started. Young 

A Id, a quiet little fellow, about eighteen years 

old, is stretched full length on the log trying to get a 

nap. Young S -th, tough, vigorous, and full of 

blood and spirits, as these old woods are of musqui- 
toes, whose hearty laugh rings out every five minutes, 
as well at misfortunes as at a joke, is smoking his 
cigar over the Albany Argus. P — — , one of the 
most careless of mortals, who is just as likely to run 
his head against a tree as one side of it — who, in all 
human probability, will have his heel on your pork 
before it is half toasted, or his pantaloon-strap in 
your tea before it is half cooled, is backed up 
against a tree, with his legs across a dead limb, 
running over the columns of the Express. He is 
one of your poetic creatures ; half the time in a 
dream, and the other half indulging in drollery 
that keeps the company in a roar. He was never 
in the woods before, and the shadow of Ihc miglify 



LAKE SANFORD. 49 

forest falls on his spirit with a strange power, awak- 
ening a world of new emotions within him. Again 
and again have I been startled by his "How savage I 
how awful !" At a little distance I myself am sit- 
ting against a stump, with the Tribune in my hand, 
telling B ^ ' n the news from Washington. This 
sets him going ; and his sensible remarks on poli- 
tical subjects would make a capital leader for a 
j)aper. There you have my fellow-travelers ; and 
you must confess there could not be better com- 
panions for a tramp of a few weeks in the forest. 

Refreshed by our dinner and primitive siesta, we 
pushed on, and at length reached the foot of Lake 
Sanford, where we found Cheney cutting down trees. 
Embarking in his boat, we rowed slowly up to the Adi- 
rondack Iron "Works. This lake is a beautiful sheet of 
water, without a hand-breath of cultivation upon its 
shores. Islands smile on you from every point, while 
to the right, lifts in grand composure the whole chain 
or rather the countless peaks of the Adirondack. 
Tamerack and cedar trees line the banks — in some 
places growing straight out over the water — the 
tops almost as near the surface as the roots. It 
seems as if they were attracted by the moisture below, 



50 



THE ADIRONDACK. 



and thus grew in a horizontal direction instead of an 
upright one. The effect of such a strange growth 
along the shore, is singular in the extreme. 

As we passed leisurely up the lake — now glancing 
away from an island — now steering along the narrow 
channel which separated two, we saw a white gull sit- 
ting on a solitary rock that just appeared above the 
water. I ascertained afterwards, that he sat there day 
after day, watching for fish. His nest was on the 
island near. 

Coming near another island, Cheney rested a mo- 
ment on his oars, and said, "here Mr. Ingham made 
a picture of the lake." 

But all journeys must end, and we at length, after 
forcing our way up the narrow and shallow inlet, found 
ourselves at the Adirondack Iron Works — the loneliest 
place a hanmier ever struck in. Forty miles to a post 
office or a mill — flour eight dollars a barrel, and com- 
mon tea a dollar a pound in these woods, in the very 
heart of the Empire State ! These quarries were dis- 
covered by an Indian, and made known by him to Mr. 
Henderson, who paid him, I believe, two shillings a 
day, and found him in tobacco, to take him in where 
the water poured over an " iron dam." From this to 



PREPARATIONS. 51 

the top of Mount Tahawus, it is nearly twenty miles 
through the woods. Not a human footstep, so our guide 
the " mighty hunter, Cheney," tells us, has profaned it 
for six years, and it is two good days' work to go and 
return, A tramp of forty miles through a pathless 
forest to see one mountain, is a high price to pay, but 
we have resolved to do it. You must know that thirty 
miles in dense woods, is equal to sixty miles 
along a beaten track. These primeval forests are not 
your open groves like those south and west, through 
which a horse can gallop ; but woven and twisted to- 
gether and filled up with underbrush that prevent you 
from seeing ten rods ahead, and w^hich scratch and 
flog you at every step, as if you were running the 
gauntlet. 

One or two nights at least, we must sleep in the 
woods, and our provision be carried on our backs, and 
so behold us at 7 o'clock in the morning ready to start. 
First comes Cheney, our guide, with a heavy pack on 
his back filled with bread, and pork and sugar, carry- 
ing an axe in his hand with which to build our shanty 

and cut our fuel. Young S th has also a pack 

strapped to his shoulders, while A Id and P 

have nothing but their overcoats lashed around nieiii ; 



rv7 



THE ADIRONDACK. 



B — — n carries a tea-kettle in his hand, for he would 
as soon think of camping out without his pipe and to- 
bacco, as without his tea. As for myself, I carry a 
green blanket tied by a rope to my shoulders, a strong 
hunting-knife and a large stick like the Alpine stock, 
which I found so great a help in climbing the Alps. 
Some of the worthy workmen of the furnace are look- 
ing on, doubtful whether all will hold out to the top. 
" Have you the pork ?" says one ; " Yes." " Have you 
the sugar and tea?" "Yes." "Have you the spy- 
glass ?" " Yes." " Well," says Cheney, " is every- 
thing ready ?" "Yes." " Then let us be off." 

Yours truly. 



VI. 



ASCENT OF MOUNT TAHAWUS A MAN SHOT A HARD 

TRAMP GLORIOUS PROSPECT A CAMP SCENE. 



Backwoods, July 12. 



Hurrah ! we are off, and crossing a branch of the 
Hudson near its source, enter the forest, Indian file, 
and stretch forward. It is no child's play before us ; 
and the twenty miles we are to travel will test the 
blood and muscle of every one. The first few miles 
there is a rough path, which was cut last summer, in 
order to bring out the body of Mr. Henderson. It 
is a great help, but filled with sad associations. At 
length we came to the spot where twenty-five work- 
men watched with the body in the forest all night. 
It was too late to get through, and here they kindled 
their camp-fire, and stayed. The rough poles are 
still there, on which the corpse rested. " Here," 
says Cheney, " on this log I sat all night, and held 



54 THE ADIRONDACK. 

Mr. Henderson's little son, eleven years of age, in my 
arms. Oli, how he cried to be taken in to his mother ; 
but it was impossible to find our way through the 
woods ; and he, at length, cried himself to sleep in 
my arms. Oh, it was a dreadful night." A mile 
further on, and we came to the rock where he was 
shot. It stands by a little pond, and was selected by 
them to dine upon. Cheney was standing on the 
other side of the pond, with the little boy, whither 
he had gone to make a raft, on which to take some 
trout, when he heard the report of a gun, and then a 
scream ; and looking across, saw Mr. Henderson clasp 
his arms twice over his breast, exclaiming, " I am 
shot!" The son fainted by Cheney's side; but in a 
few moments all stood round the dying man, who 
murmured, "What an accident, and in such a place !" 
In laying down his pistol, with the muzzle unfortu- 
nately towards him, the hammer struck the rock, and 
the cap exploding, the entire contents were lodged in 
his body. After commending his soul to his Maker, 
and telling his son to be a good boy, and give his 
love to his mother, he leaned back and died. It 
made us sad to gaze on the spot ; and poor Cheney, 
as he drew a long sigh, looked the picture of sorrow. 



i 




THE MARCH. 55 

Perhaps some of us would thus be earned out of the 
woods. He left New York as full of hope as myself; 
and here he met his end. Shall I be thus borne 
back to my friends ? It is a little singular that he 
was always nervously afraid of fire-arms, and car- 
ried this pistol solely as a protection against wild 
beasts ; and yet, he fell by his own hand. He never 
could see a man walking in the streets with a gun in 
his hand, without stepping to the door to inquire if 
it were loaded. Poor man ! it was a sad place to die 
in ; for his body had to be carried over thirty miles 
on men's shoulders, before they came to a public 
road. 

The exhausting march, however, soon drove these 
sad thoughts from our minds, and we strained for- 
ward — now treading over a springy marsh — now 
stooping and crawling like lame iguanas, through a 
swamp of spruce trees, and anon following the path 
made by deer and moose, as they came from the 
mountains to the streams, or climbing around a cata- 
ract, until, at length, we reached Lake Golden, per- 
fectly embosomed amid the gigantic mountains, and 
looking for all the world like an innocent child sleep- 
ing in a robber's embrace. Awfully savage and wild 



•56 THE ADIRONDACK. 

are the mountains that enclose this placid sheet of 
water. Crossing a strip of forest, we next struck the 
Opalescent River, so called from the opals found in its 
bed. The forest here is almost impassible ; and so, for 
five miles, we kept the bed of the stream, chasing it 
backward to its source. The channel is one mass of 
rocks; and hence, our march was a constant leap 
from one to another, requiring a correct eye, and a 
steady foot, to keep the balance. Thus, zigzaging 
over the bed of this turbulent stream, we flitted 
backward and forward, like flies over the surface of 

a river, till, at length, I heard a shout. S ^th had 

missed his footing, and slipping from a rock, gone 
plump into a deep pool. Gathering himself up, he 
laughed louder than the loudest, and pushed on. 

Suddenly Cheney stopped and listened ; for the 
deep bay of his hound in the distance, rang through 
the forest. " He has stopped something," he ex- 
claimed ; "hark, how fierce he is. I shouldn't won- 
der if it was a moose ; for a coio moose, with her calf, 
will stop and fight a dog this time a year. If it is a 
moose, it would be worth while to go back." But I 
was after Mount Tahawus, and could ill afford to lin- 
ger on the way, although soon after we heard the low- 



THE LUNCH. 67 

ing of a moose in a distant gorge — how lonely the 
deep echo sounded. 

At length we all came to a halt on the rocks, and 
prepared for dinner, and no one was more glad than 
myself to rest. A blazing fire was kindled of dry logs, 
and soon each one had his piece of fat pork on a long 
stick, and was holding it over the flame. I counted 
four pieces all coming to a focus before I added mine 
to the list. Putting them together was a capital ar- 
rangement, for the fat dropping off into the fire in- 
creased the blaze, and hence facilitated the cooking. 
Dipping my slice every few seconds into the river to 
freshen it, and then laying it upon my bread to pre- 
serve the gravy, I at length had the satisfaction of 
seeing it v/ell done. It was eaten with an appetite 
that quite alarmed me, for it indicated such a radical 
change in my notions and taste, that I was afraid I 
might turn into something monstrous. 

Soon after, our packs were all slung again, and we 
on the march. We continued diving deeper and deeper 
into the hills, until we at last reached the base of 
the mountain, and the foot of a lofty cataract. I have 
climbed the Alps and Appenines, but never found foot 
and eye in such requisition before. It was literally 



58 THE ADIRONDACK. 

"right up," while the spruce trees, with their dry- 
limbs like thorns a yard long, stuck out on every side, 
ready to transfix us, and compelling us to duck and 
dodge at every step. Now sinking through the treach- 
erous moss that covered some gap in the rocks, and 
now swinging from one dead tree to another, we con- 
tinued for two miles panting and straining up the 
steep acclivity, flogged and torn at every step. We 
had already gone fifteen miles, and such a winding up 

of the tramp was too much. H thought "the 

Millerites had better start from this elevation." A 

said 'twould " tear their ascension robes so that they 

would look rather shabby on the wing." T was 

sure the notion would take with them, as they 

" Could make such a dale of the journey on foot.^'' 

One large athletic hunter we had taken along as 
an assistant, gave out, so that we were compelled fre- 
quently to halt and let him rest. The fir trees 
grew thicker and more dwarfish as we ascended, ti4 
they became mere shrubs, and literally matted to- 
gether, so that you could not see two feet in advance 
of you. Through, and over these we floundered, and 
urged our steps ; yet, tired as I was, I could not but 



THE TOP OF TAHAWUS. 59 

stop and laugh to see B n fight his way through. 

Rolling himself over like a cart-wheel, he would dis- 
appear in the thiclv: evergreens — in a short time, his 
face, red with the fierce struggle, would rise like that 
of a spent swimmer's over the waves ; and then, with 
a crash, he went out of sight again ; and so kept up 
the battle for at least half an hour. Here we passed 
over the bed of a moose, which we doubtless roused 
from his repose, for the rank grass was still matted 
where he had lain. At length, we emerged upon the 
brow of a cliff, across a gulf at the base of which arose 
a bare, naked pyramid, that pushed its rocky forehead 
high into the heavens. This was the summit of 
Tahawus. A smooth grey rock, shaped like an in- 
verted bowl, stood before us, as if on purpose to 

mock all our efforts. Halfway up this was S th, 

looking no larger than a dog, as with his pack on his 
back he crawled on all fours over the rocks. Hitherto 
nothing could knock the fun out of him ; and as h". 
from time to time stumbled on a log, or heard the 
complaint of some one behind, he would sing in a 
comical sort of a chorus, '' go-iii-up,^^ followed by his 
hearty ha-ha-ha, as if he were impervious to fatigue. 
To everv lialloo we sent after him, lie would re- 



60 



THE ADIRONDACK. 



turn that everlasting " go-in-iip,'^ sung out so funnily 
that we invariably echoed back his laugh, till the 
mountains rang again. But now he was silent — 
the '^ go-in-up^^ had become a serious matter, audit 
required all his breath to enable him to ''go up." 

As we ascended this bald cone, the chill wind swept 
by like a December blast ; and well it might, for the 
snow had been gone but a few weeks. The fir 
trees had gradually dwindled away, till they were not 
taller than your finger, and now disappeared altoge- 
ther ; for nothing but naked rock could resist the 
climate of this high region. The dogs, which had 
hitherto scoured the forest on every side, crouched 
close and shivering to our side — evidently frightened, 
as they looked off on empty space — and all was 
dreary, savage, and wild. 

At length we reached the top ; and oh, what a view 
spread out before, or rather below us. Here we were 
more than a mile up in the heavens, on the highest 
point of land in the Empire State ; and with one 
exception the highest in the Union ; and in the centre 
of a chaos of mountains, the like of which I never 
saw before. It was wholly different from the Alps. 
There were no snow peaks and shining glaciers : but 



Cr.ORIOUS PROSPECT. 61 

all was grey, or green, or Mack, as far as the vision 
could extend. It looked as if the Almighty had once 
set this vast earth rolling like the sea ; and then, in 
the midst of its maddest flow, bid all the gigantic 
billows stop and congeal in their places. And there 
they stood, just as He froze them — grand and gloomy. 
There was the long swell — and there the cresting, 
bursting billow — and there, too, the deep, black, 
cavernous gvilf. Far away — more than fifty miles 
to the south-east — a storm was raging, and the mas- 
sive clouds over the distant mountains of Vermont, 
or rather between us and them, and below their sum- 
mits, stood balanced in space, with their white tops 
towering over their black and dense bases, as if they 
were the margin of Jehovah's mantle folded back to 
let the earth beyond be seen. That far-away storm 
against a background of mountains, and with 
nothing but the most savage scenery between — how 
mysterious — how awful it seemed ! 

Mount Golden, with its terrific precipices — Mount 
Mclntyre, with its bold, black, barren, monster-like- 
head — White Face, with its white spot on its forehead, 
and countless other summits pierced the heavens in 
every (]ireotif)n. And then, such a stretch of forost, 



62 THE ADIRONDACK. 

for more than three liiindred miles in circumference — 
ridges and slopes of green, broken only by lakes that 
dared just to peep into view from their deep hiding- 
places — one vast wilderness seamed here and there by 
a river whose surface you could not see, but whose 
course you could follow by the black winding gap 
through the tops of the trees. Still there was beauty 
as well as grandeur in the scene. Lake Champlain, 
with its islands spread away as far as the eye could 
follow towards the Canadas, while the distant Grreen 
Mountains rolled their granite summits along the 
eastern horizon, with Burlington curtained in smoke 
at their feet. To the north-west gleamed out here and 
there the lakes of the Saranac River, and farther to 
the west, those along the Raquette ; nearer by. Lake 
Sanford, Placid Lake, Lake Golden, Lake Henderson, 
shone in quiet beauty amid the solitude. Nearly 
thirty lakes in all were visible — some dark as polished 
jet beneath the shadow of girdling mountains ; others 
flashing out upon the limitless landscape, like smiles 
to relieve the gloom of the great solitude. Through- 
out the wide extent but three clearings were visible — 
all was as Nature made it. My head swam in the 
wondrous vision : and I seemed lifted up above the 



THE LAST VIEW. 63 

earth, and shown all its mountains and forests and 
lakes at once. But the impression of the whole, it 
is impossible to convey — nay, I am myself hardly 
conscious what it is. It seems as if I had seen 
vagueness, terror, sublimity, strength, and beauty, all 
embodied, so that I had a new and more definite know- 
ledge of them. God appears to have wrought in these 
old mountains with His highest power, and designed 
to leave a symbol of His omnipotence. Man is noth- 
ing here, his very shouts die on his lips. One of our 
company tried to sing, but his voice fled from him 
into the empty space. We fired a gun, but it gave 
only half a report, and no echo came back, for there 
was nothing to check the sound in its flight. " God 
is great !" is the language of the heart, as it swells 
over such a scene. 

And this is in New York, I at length exclaimed, 
whose surface is laced with railroads and canals, and 
whose rivers are turbulent with steamboats and 
fringed with cities. Yet here is a mountain in its 
centre but few feet have ever trod, or will tread for a 
century to come. 

We designed to encamp as near the summit as we 
could, and obtain firewood, so that we might see the 



64 THE ADIRONDACK. 

sun rise from the summit, but the heavens grew dark- 
er every moment, warning us to find shelter for the 
night. About 5 o'clock we left the top and went hel- 
ter-skelter down the precipitous sides. After going at 
a break-neck pace for several miles over rocks, along 

ravines and through the bushes, S th shouting at 

every leap ^^ go-in-doivn,^^ we at length stopped and be- 
gan to peel bark to cover us for the night, for we were 
twelve miles from a clearing, and it was getting dark. 
>^oon the axe resounded through the forest, and tree 
after tree came to the earth to furnish us fuel. " Every 
man must pick his own bed," cried our guide ; for he 
had his hands full to erect a shanty. Our knapsacks 
were laid aside, and we scattered ourselves among the 
balsam trees with knife in hand to cut boughs to sleep 
on. The mossy ground was damp, and I picked me a 
thick couch and stretched myself upon it while supper 
was preparing. Our fire was made of logs more than 
twenty feet long, and as the flames arose and caught 
the spruce trees they shot up in pyramids of flames, 
crackling in the night air like so many fire-crackers. 
One dry tree took fire, and I asked if it might not burn 
in two during the night and fall on us. Cheney 
walked around it to ascertain the way it leaned, then 



CAMP VIEW. Go 

quietly seating himself said, " yes, it will bum in two, 
but it will fall t'other way." I must confess, this 
cool reply was not wholly satisfactory, for burning 
trees sometimes take curious whims, — ^however, there 
was no help, and so I lay down to sleep. The storm 
which had been slowly gathering soon commenced, 
and all night long the rain fell, but the good fire kept 
crackling and blazing away, and I was so completely 
fagged out that I slept deliciously. I awoke but 
once, and then enjoyed such a long and hearty laugh, 
that I felt quite refreshed. The immense logs in 
front of -us, became in time a mass of lurid coals send- 
ing forth a scorching heat. Hence, as we lay packed 
together like a row of pickled fish, those in the centre 
took the full force of the fire. First a sleeper would 
strike his hand upon his thigh and roll over — then 
give the other a slap, dreaming, doubtless, of being 
boiled like a turkey, till at length the heat waked him 
up, when he rose and shot like an arrow into the 
woods. The next went through the same operation — 
the third, and so on, till all but the two '' outsiders," 
of which I was one, were in the woods cooling them- 
selves off in the rain. Not a word was spoken for 
some time, for they were not fairly awake, but as one 



66 THE ADIRONDACK. 

began to ask another, why he was out there in the 
dark, the answers were so honest and yet so droll, 
that I went mto convulsions. If you had heard 
them comparing notes as I did, back of the shanty, 
your sides would have ached for a fortnight. And 
then the sheepish way they crawled back one after 
another, looking in stupid amazement at me rolling 
and screaming on the balsam boughs, would have 
quite finished a soberer man than you. 

The tramp of twelve miles, next morning, was the 
hardest, for the distance, I ever took. Stiff and lame, 
with nothing to excite my imagination, I dragged 
myself sullenly along, and at noon reached the Iron 
Works. 

" Oh, but a weary wight was he, 
When he reached the foot of the doo-wood tree." 



VII. 



SAGACITY OF THL HOUND THE INDIAN PASS PRECIPICE 

TWO THOUSAND FEET HIGH. 

Backwoods, July 6. 

Dear H : 

The famous Indian Pass is probably the most 
remarkable gorge in this countryj if not in the 
world. On Monday morning, a council was called 
of our party, to determine whether we should 
visit it, for the effects of the severe tramp two 
days before, had not yet left us, and hardly one 
walked without limping — as for myself, I could 
not wear my boots and had borrowed a pair of large 
shoes. But the Indian Pass I was determined to see, 
even if I remained behind alone, and so we all to- 
gether started off. It was six miles through the 
forest, and we were compelled to march in single file. 
At one moment skirting the margin of a beautiful 
lake, and then creeping through thickets, or stepping 



68 THE ADIRONDACK. 

daintily across a springing morass, we picked our 
way until we at length struck a stream, the bed of 
which we followed into the bosom of the mountains. 
We crossed deer paths every few rods, and soon the 
two hounds Cheney had taken with him, parted from 
us, and their loud deep bay began to ring and echo 
through the gorge. 

The instincts with which animals are endowed by 
their Creator, on purpose to make them successful in 
the chase, is one of the most curious things in nature. 
I watched for a long time the actions of one of these 
noble hounds. "With his nose close to the leaves, he 
would double backwards and forwards on a track, to 
see whether it was fresh or not — then abandon it at 
once, when he found it too old. At length, striking a 
fresh one, he started off; but the next moment, finding 
he was going back instead of forwards on the track, he 
wheeled, and came dashing past on a furious run, 
his eyes glaring with excitement. Soon his voice 
made the forest ring ; and I could imagine the quick 
start it gave to the deer, quietly grazing, it might 
have been, a mile away. Lifting his beautiful head 
a moment, to ascertain if that cry of death was 
on his track, he bounded off in the long chase and 




^?'--'W'»*»#'i*!lgS 




Cheney's hound. 69 

bold swim for life. Well ; let them pass : the cry 
grows fainter and fainter ; and they — the pursued 
and the pursuer — are but an emblem of what is 
going on in the civilized world from which I am 
severed. Life may be divided into two parts — -the 
hunters and the hunted. It is an endless chase, 
where the timid and the weak constantly fall by 
the way. The swift racers come and go like sha- 
dows on the vision ; and the cries of fear and of 
victory swell on the ear and die away, only to give 
place to another and another. Thus musing, I 
pushed on ; — at length, we left the bed of the 
stream, and began to climb amid broken rocks that 
were piled in huge chaos, up and up, as far as the 
eye could reach. My rifle became such a burden, 
that I was compelled to leave it against a tree, 
with a mark erected near by, to determine its lo- 
cality. I had expected, from paintings I had seen 
of this Pass, that I was to walk almost on a level 
into a huge gap between two mountains, and look 
up on the precipices that toppled heaven high above 
me. But here was a world of rocks, overgrown with 
trees and moss — over and under and between which 
we were compelled to crawl and dive and work our 



'0 



THE ADIRONDACK. 



way with so much exertion and care, that the 
strongest soon began to be exhausted. Caverns opened 
on every side ; and a more hideous, toilsome, break- 
neck tramp I never took. Leaping a chasm at one 
time, we paused upon the brow of an overhanging 
cliff, while Cheney, pointing below, said, " There, 
I've scared panthers from those caverns many times ; 
we may meet one yet : if so, I think he'll remember 
us as long as he lives /" I thought the probabilities 
were, that we should remember him much longer than 
he would us. At least I had no desire to task his 
memory, being perfectly willing to leave the matter 
undecided. There was a stream somewhere ; but no 
foot could follow it, for it was a succession of cascades, 
with perpendicular walls each side hemming it in. 
It was more like climbing a broken and shattered 
mountain, than entering a gorge. At length, how- 
ever, we came where the fallen rocks had made an 
open space around, and spread a fearful ruin in their 
place. On many of these, trees were growing fifty 
feet high, while a hundred men could find shelter in 
their sides. As the eye sweeps over these fragments 
of a former earthquake, the imagination is busy with 
the past — the period when an interlocking range of 



THE PRECIPICE. 71 

mountains was riven, and the encircling peaks bowing 
in terror, reeled like ships upon a tossing ocean, and 
the roar of a thousand storms rolled away from the 
yawning gulf, into which precipices and forests went 
down with the deafening crash of a falling world. A 
huge mass that then had been loosened from its high 
bed, and hurled below, making a cliff of itself, from 
which to fall would have been certain death, our 
guide called the " Church," — and it did lift itself there 
like a huge altar, right in front of the main precipice 
that rose in a naked wall more than a thousand feet* 
perpendicular. It is two thousand feet from the sum- 
mit to the base, but part of the chasm has been filled 
with its own ruins, so that the spot on which you 
stand is a thousand feet above the valley below, and 
nearly three thousand above tide water. Thus it 
stretches for three-quarters of a mile — in no place less 
than five hundred feet perpendicular. By dint of 
scrambling and pulling each other up, we at last suc- 
ceeded in reaching the top of the church, while from 
our very feet rose this awful cliff that really oppressed 
me with its near and frightful presence. Majestic, 
solemn and silent, with the daylight from above pour- 
* Some say a thousand, others twelve hundred. 



72 THE ADIRONDACK. 

ing all over its dread form, it stood the impersonation 
of strength and grandeur. 

I never saw but one precipice that impressed me so, 
and that was in the Alps, in the Pass of the Grand 
'Scheideck. I lay on my back filled with strange 
feelings of the power and grandeur of the Grod who 
had both framed and rent this mountain asunder. 
There it stood still and motionless in its majesty 
Far, far away heavenward rose its top, fringed with 
fir trees, that looked, at that immense height, lilve 
mere shrubs ; and they, too, did not wave, but stood 
silent and moveless as the rock they crowned. Any 
motion or life would have been a relief — even the 
tramp of the storm ; for there was something fearful 
in that mysterious, profound silence. How loudly 
(Tod speaks to the heart, when it lies thus awe-struck 
and subdued in the presence of His works. In the 
shadow of such a grand and terrible form, man seems 
but the plaything of a moment, to be blown away 
with the first breath. Persons not accustomed to 
scenes of this kind, would not at first get an adequate 
impression of the magnitude of the precipice. Every- 
thing is on such a gigantic scale — all the proportions 
so vast, and the mountains so high about it, that the 



IMPRESSIONS. 73 

real individual greatness is lost sight of. But that 
wall of a thousand feet perpendicular, with its seams 
and rents and stooping cliiTs, is one of the few things 
in the world the beholder can never forget. It frowns 
yet on my vision in my solitary hours ; and with 
feelings half of sympathy, half of terror, I think of 
it rising there in its lonely greatness. 

*' Has not the soul, the being of your life, 
Received a shock of awful consciousness, 
In some calm season, when these lofty rocks, 
At night's approach, bring down th' unclouded sky 
To rest upon the circumambient walls ; 
A temple framing of dimensions vast, 
• * The whispering air 
Sends inspiration from the shadowy heights 
And blind recesses of the cavern'd rocks ; 
The little rills and waters num.berless, 
Insensible by daylight, blend their notes 
With the loud streams ; and often, at the hour 
When issue forth the first pale stars, is heard 
Within the circuit of the fabric huge. 
One voice — one solitary raven, flying 
Athwart the concave of the dark blue dome, 
Unseen, perchance, above the power of sight — 
An iron knell ! with echoes from afar, 
Faint and still fainter." 
4 



74 THE ADIRONDACK. 

I will only add, that none of the drawings or paint- 
ings I have seen of this pass, give so correct an idea 
of it, as the one accompanying this description. "We 
turned our steps homeward, and after having chased a 
deer into the lake in vain, reached the Adirondack 
Iron "Works at noon. We had traveled twelve miles, 
a part of the way on our hands and knees. 

I had received a fall in the pass which stunned me 
dreadfully, and made every step like driving a nail 
into my brain. Losing my footing, I had fallen back- 
wards, and gone down head foremost among the rocks 
— a single foot either side, and T should have been 
precipitated into a gulf of broken rocks, from which 
nothing of myself but a mangled mass would ever 
have been taken. Stunned and helpless, I was borne 
by my friends to a rill, the cool water of which re- 
vived me. 

Yours, &c., 



VIII. 



THE HUNTER CHENEY ENCOUNTERS WITH A PANTHER 

DEADLY STRUGGLE WITH A WOLF A BEAR AND MOOSE 

FIGHT SHOOTS HIMSELF. 

Backwoods, July 12. 

Dear H : 

You know one expects to hear of hunting achieve- 
ments upon our western frontier, where the sounds of 
civilization have not yet frightened away the wild 
beasts that haunt the forest. But here in the 
heart of the Empire State is a man whose fame 
is known far and wide as the " mighty hunter," 
and if desperate adventures and hair-breadth escapes 
give one a claim to the sobriquet, it certainly be- 
longs to him. Some ten or fifteen years ago, Cheney, 
then a young man, becoming enamored of forest life 
left Ticonderoga, and with his rifle on his shoulder, 
plunged into this then unknown, untrodden wilder- 
ness. Here he lived for year^ on what his gun 



76 THE ADIRONDACK. 

brought him. Finding in his long stretches through 
the wood, where the timber is so thick you can- 
not see an animal more than fifteen rods, that a 
heavy rifle was a useless burden, he had a pistol made 
about eleven inches in Length, stocked like a rifle, 
which,^with his hunting knife and dog, became his 
only companions. I had him with me several days as 
a guide, for he knows better than any other man the 
mysteries of this wilderness, though there are vast 
tracts even he would not venture to traverse. Moose, 
deer, bears, panthers, wolves, and wild cats, have by 
turns, made his acquaintance, and some of his en- 
counters would honor old Daniel Boone himself. 
Once he came suddenly upon a panther that lay 
crouched for a spring within a single bound of him. 
He had nothing but his gun and knife with him, 
while the glaring eyes and gathered form of the furi- 
ous animal at his feet, told him that a moment's 
delay, a miss, or a false cap, would bring them locked 
in each other's embrace, and in a death-struggle. 
But without alarm or over-haste, he brought his riflo 
to bear upon the creature's head, and fired just as he 
was sallying back for the spring. The ball entered 
the brain, and with one wild bound his life departed, 



FIGHT WITH A WOLF. 77 

and he lay quivering on the leaves. Being a little 
curious to know whether he was not somewhat agi- 
tated in finding himself in sueh close proximity to a 
panther all ready for the fatal leap, I asked him how 
he felt when he saw the animal crouching so near. 
*' I felt," said he coolly, " as if I should kill him." I 
need not tell you that / felt a little foolish at the 
answer, and concluded not to tell him that I expected 
he would say that his heart suddenly stopped beating, 
and the woods reeled around him ; for the perfect sim- 
plicity of the reply took me all aback — ^yet it was 
rather an odd feeling to be uppermost in a man's 
mind just at that moment — it was, however, per- 
fectly characteristic of Cheney. 

His fight with a wolf was a still more serious 
affair. As he came upon the animal, ravenous with 
hunger, and floundering through the snow, he raised 
his rifle and fired ; but the wolf, making a spring just 
as he pulled the trigger, the ball did not hit a 
vital part. This enraged her still more ; and she 
made at him furiously. He had now nothing but an 
empty rifle with which to defend himself, and instant- 
ly clubbing it, he laid the stock over the wolf's head. 
So desperately did the creature fight, that he broke 



78 THE ADIRONDACK. 

the stock into fragments without disabling her. He 
then seized the barrel, which, making a better 
bludgeon, told with more effect. The bleeding and 
enraged animal seized the hard iron with her teeth, 
and endeavored to wrench it from his grasp — 
but it was a matter of life and death with Cheney, 
and he fought savagely. But, in the meantime, 
the wolf, by stepping on his snow-shoes as she closed 
with him, threw him over. He then thought the 
game was up, unless he could make his dogs, which 
were scouring the forest around, hear him. He 
called loud and sharp after them, and soon one — a 
young hound — sprung into view : but no sooner did 
he see the condition of his master, than he turned in 
affright, and with his tail between his legs, fled into 
the woods. But, at this critical moment, the other 
hound burst with a shrill savage cry, and a wild 
bound, upon the struggling group. Sinking his teeth 
to the jaw bone in the wolf, he tore her fiercely from 
his master. Turning to grapple with this new foe, 
she gave Cheney opportunity to gather himself up, 
and fight to better advantage. At length, by a well- 
directed blow, he crushed in the skull, which finished 
the work. After this he got his pistol made. 



BEAR FIGHT. 79 

You know that a bear always sleeps through the 
winter. Curled up in a cavern, or under a fallen tree, 
in some warm pk.ce, he composes himself to rest, 
and, Rip-Yan-Winkle-like, snoozes away the season. 
True, he is somewhat thin when he thaws out in the 
spring, and looks voracious about the jaws, making 
it rather dangerous to come in contact with him. 
Cheney told me, that one day, while hunting on snow 
shoes, he suddenly broke through the crust, and came 
upon a bear taking his winter's nap. The spot this 
fellow had chosen, was the cavity made by the roots 
of an upturned tree. It was a warm, snug place ; 
and the snow having fallen several feet deep over him, 
protected him from frosts and winds. The uncere- 
monious thrust of Cheney's leg against his carcass, 
roused up Bruin, and with a growl that made the 
hunter withdraw his foot somewhat hastily, he leaped 
forth on the snow. Cheney had just given his knife 
to his companion, who had gone to the other side of 
the mountain to meet him farther on ; and hence, had 
nothing but his pistol to defend himself with. He 
had barely time to get ready before the huge creature 
was close upon him. Unterrified, however, he took 
deliberate aim right between the fellow's eyes, and 



80 THE ADIRONDACK. 

pulled the trigger; but the cap exploded without 
discharging the pistol. He had no time to put on 
another cap ; so, seizing his pistol by the muzzle, he 
aimed a tremendous blow at the creature's head. But 
the bear caught it on his paw with a cufF that sent it 
ten yards from Cheney's hand, and the next moment 
was rolling over Cheney himself in the snow. His 
knife being gone, it became simply a contest of 
physical strength ; and, in hugging and wrestling, the 
bear evidently had the advantage ; and the hunter's 
life seemed not worth asking for. But, just then, his 
dog came up, and seizing the animal from behind, 
made him loosen his hold, and turn and defend him- 
self. Cheney then sprang to his feet, and began to 
look around for his pistol. By good luck he saw the 
breech just peeping out of the snow. Drawing it 
forth, and hastily putting on a fresh cap, and re- 
fastening his snow-shoes, which had become loosened 
in the struggle, he made after the bear. When he 
and the dog closed, both fell, and began to roll, one 
over the other down the side-hill, locked in the 
embrace of death. The bear, however, was too much 
for the dog, and, at length, shook him off, leaving the 
latter dreadfully lacerated — " torn," as Cheney said, 



ATTACK OF A MOOSE. 81 

" all to pieces. But," he added, " I never saw such 
pluck in a dog before. As soon as he found I was 
ready for a fight he was furious, bleeding as he was, 
to be after the bear. I told him we would have the 
rascal, if we died for it ; and away he jumped, leav- 
ing his blood on the snow as he went. ' Hold on,' 
said I, and he held on till I came up. I took aim at 
his head, meaning to put the ball in the centre of his 
brain ; but it struck below, and only tore his jaw to 
pieces. I loaded up again, and fired, but did not kill 
him, though the ball went through his head. The 
third time I fetched him, and he was a bouncer, I tell 
you." " But the dog, Cheney," said I ; " what 
became of the poor, noble dog ?" '' Oh, he was 
dreadfully mangled. I took him up, and carried him 
home, and nursed him. He got well, but was never 
good for much afterwards — that fight broke him 
down." I asked him if a moose would ever show 
fight. '' Yes," he said, '* a cow moose, with her calf; 
and so will any of them when wounded or hard 
pushed. I was once out hunting, when my dog 
started two. I heard a thrashing through the bushes, 
and in a minute more I saw both of them coming 

right towards me. As soon as they saw me they 

4* 



82 THE ADIRONDACK. 

bent down their heads, and made at me at full speed. 
The bushes and saplins snapped under them like 
pipe-stems. Just before they reached me, I stepped 
behind a tree, and fired as they jumped by. The ball 
went clear through one, and lodged in the other," 

Cheney kills about seventy deer per annum. He 
has none of the roughness of the hunter ; but is one 
of the mildest, most unassuming, pleasant men you 
will meet with anywhere. Among other things, he 
told me of once following a bear all day, and treeing 
him at night when it was so dark he could not see to 
shoot ; then sitting down at the root, to wait till morn- 
ing that he might kill him. But, after awhile, all 
being still, he fell asleep, and did not wake till day- 
light. Opening his eyes in astonishment, he looked 
up for the bear, but the cunning rascal had gone. 
Taking advantage of his enemy's slumbers, he had 
crawled down and waddled off. Cheney said he 
never felt so fiat in his life, to be outwitted thus, and 
by a bear. 

With one anecdote illustrating his coolness, I 
will bid his hunting adventures adieu. He was 
once hunting alone by a little lake, when his 
dogs brought a noble buck into the water. Cock- 



A hunter's coolness. 83 

ing his gun, and laying it in the bottom of the 
boat, he pulled after the deer, which was swimming 
boldly for his life. In the eagerness of pursuit, he 
hit his rifle either with his paddle or foot, when it 
went off, sending the ball directly through one of his 
ankles. He stopped, and looking at his benumbed 
limb, saw where the bullet had come out of his boot. 
The first thought was, to return to the shore ; " the 
next was," said he, "I may need that venison before I 
get out of these woods ;" so, without waiting to ex- 
amine the wound, he pulled on after the deer. 
Coming up with him, he beat him to death with his 
paddles, and pulling him into the boat, rowed ashore. 
Cutting off his boot, he found his leg was badly man- 
gled and useless. Bandaging it up, however, as well 
as he could, he cut a couple of crotched sticks for 
crutches, and with these walked fourteen miles to the 
nearest clearing. There he got help, and was carried 
slowly out of the woods. How a border-life sharpens 
a man's wits. Especially in an emergency does he 
show to what strict discipline he has subjected his 
mind. His resources are almost exhaustless, and his 
presence of mind equal to that of one who has been 
in a hundred battles. Wounded, perhaps mortally, it 



84 THE ADIRONDACK. 

nevertheless flashed on this hunter's thoughts, that 
he might be so crippled that he could not stir for days 
and weeks, but starve to death there in the woods. 
" I may need that venison before I get out," said he ; 
and so, with a mangled bleeding limb, he pursued 
and killed a deer, on which he might feed in the 
last extremity. 



IX. 



GAME MOOSE CRUSTING MOOSE A CATAMOUNT CHASE 

BETWEEN A DEER AND A PANTHER A BEAR CAUGHT 

IN A TRAP. 

Backwoods, July 14, 1846. 
Dear H : 

G-AME of all kinds swarm the forest ; bears, wolves, 
panthers, deer, and moose. I was not aware that so 
many moose were to be found here : yet I do not 
believe there is an animal of the African desert with 
which our people are not more familiar than with it. 
In size, at least, he is worthy of attention, being 
much taller than the ox. You will sometimes find an 
old bull moose eight feet high. The body is about the 
size of a cow, v/hile the legs are long and slender, giv- 
ing to the huge bulk the appearance of being mounted 
on stilts. The horns are broad, flat, and branching, 
shooting in a horizontal curve from the head. I saw 



86 THE ADIRONDACK. 

one pair from a moose that a cousin of Cheney killed, 
that were nearly four feet across from tip to tip, and 
the horn itself fifteen inches broad. The speed of 
these animals through the thick forests, seems almost 
miraculous, when we consider their enormous bulk 
and branching horns. They seldom break into a 
gallop, but when roused by a dog, start off on a rapid 
pace, or half trot, with the nose erect and the head 
working sideways to let their horns pass through 
the branches. They are rarely, if ever, taken by 
dogs, as they run on the start twenty miles without 
stopping, over mountains, through swamps, and 
across lakes and rivers. They are mostly killed early 
in the spring — ^being then unable to travel the woods, 
as the snow is often four and five feet deep, and 
covered with a thick sharp crust. At these times, 
and indeed in the early part of winter, they seek 
out some lonely spot near a spring or water-course, 
and there " yard," as it is termed ; i. e. they trample 
down the snow around them and browse, eating 
everything clean as far as they go. Sometimes you 
will find an old bull moose " yarding" alone, some- 
times two or three together. When found in this 
state, they are easily killed, for they cannot run fast, 



A MOOSE YARD. 87 

as they sink nearly up to their backs in the snow at 
every jump. 

Endowed, like most animals, with an instinct that 
approaches marvelously near to reason, they have 
another mode of "yarding," which furnishes greater 
security than the one just described. You know that 
mountain chains are ordinarily covered with heavy 
timber, while the hills and swelling knolls at their 
bases are crowned with a younger growth, furnishing 
buds and tender sprouts in abundance. If you don't, 
the moose do ; and so, during a thaw in January or 
early spring, when the snow is from three to five feet 
deep, a big fellow will begin to travel over and 
around one of these hills. He knows that '^ after a 
thaw comes a freeze ;" and hence, makes the best 
use of his time. He will not stop to eat, but keeps 
moving until the entire hill is ftz-sected and inter- 
sected from crown to base with paths he himself has 
made. Therefore, when the weather changes, his 
field of operations is still left open. The crust 
freezes almost to the consistency of ice, and yet not 
sufficiently strong to bear his enormous bulk ; little; 
however, does he care for that : the hill is at his 
disposal, and he quietly loiters along the paths he 



88 THE ADIRONDACK. 

has made, "browsing" as he goes — expecting, most 
rationally, that before he has finished the hill, another 
thaw will come, when he will be able, without incon- 
venience, to change his location. Is not this adapt- 
ing one's self to circumstances ? 

But it is no child's play to go after these fellows in 
midwinter ; for the places they select are remote and 
lonely. It generally requires one to be absent days, 
and from the more open settlements, weeks, to take 
them. The hunters lash on their great snow-shoes, 
which, like an immense webbed foot, keep them 
on the surface ; and taking a sled and blankets with 
them, start for some deep, dark, and secluded spot 
which these animals are known to haunt. By night 
they sleep on the snow, wrapped in their blankets ; 
and when they draw near the place where they expect 
to find a " yard," the utmost circumspection is used, 
and every advance made with the stealthiness of an 
Indian. Sometimes a moose will wind his enemies, 
and then he is all agitation and excitement ; but the 
fatal bullet ends at once his troubles and fears, and 
his huge carcass is cut up, and the choicest parts car- 
ried home on the sled or sleds. Many a crimson spot 
is thus left on the snow in this wilderness, around 



PANTHER AND DEER CHASE. 89 

which at night the wolves and panthers gather, fill- 
ing the solitude with their cries. 

Two Indians killed eighteen in this region last 
spring, and one hunter told me that he had shot three 
in a single day in the early part of March. These 
enormous wild cattle are of a black color, and when 
closely pressed, will fight desperately. "Wolves have 
fine picking in deep snow, especially when there is a 
stiff crust on the surface. The slender hoof of the 
deer, which yard like the moose, cuts through at every 
leap, letting them up to the belly without giving firm 
ground to spring from, even then ; while the broad- 
spreading paw of the wolf supports him and he skims 
along the surface. In this unequal chase, he soon 
overtakes his victim, and devours him. " But the 
wildest chase I ever saw," remarked a hunter to me 
once, with whom I was in the forest several days, 
*' was between a panther and a deer, in the open 
woods." They were not fifteen feet apart, he said, 
when they passed him, and such lightning speed he 
never before witnessed. Though he had his rifle in 
his hand, and they were but a few rods distant when 
he saw them, he never thought of firing. 

They came and went more like shadows than living 



90 THE ADIRONDACK. 

things. The mouths of both were wiie open, and the 
tongue of the deer hanging out from fatigue, while 
their eyes seemed starting from their sockets — 
one from fear, the other from rage. Swift as the 
arrow in its flight, and as noiseless, save the strokes 
of their rapid bounds on the leaves — ^they fled away, 
and the forest closed over them. Over rocks, and logs, 
and streams, that slender and delicate form went fly- 
ing on, winged with terror, while, so near that he 
almost felt his hot breath on his sides, he heard his 
foe pant after him. All, hunger will outlive fear, and 
before many miles were sped over, that harmless thing 
lay gasping in death, and its entrails were torn out 
ere the heart had ceased to beat. 

And thus, methought, it happens everywhere in 
G-od's universe. Innocence is safe nowhere : — even in 
the solitude of the forest — in nature's sacred temple — 
it falls before the power of cruel passion. The hunters 
and the hunted come and go like shadows, and the 
appealing accents of fear, and the fierce cry of pursuit 
or vengeance, ring a moment on the ear, and then are 
lost in a solitude deeper than that of the wilderness. 

The panther like the lion depends more upon his 
first spring than any after effort. Lying close to a 



A CATAMOUNT. 91 

limb, he watches the approach of his victim; then 
with a single bound lights upon its back, planting his 
claws deep in the quivering flesh. It requires a 
strong effort then to shake him oft', or loosen his 
hold. 

His cry of hunger is very much like that of a child 
in distress, and is indescribably fearful when heard at 
night in the forest. It is seldom, however, that a 
traveler sees any of these animals of prey. They are 
more afraid of him, than he of them ; and winding 
him at a long distance, flee to their hiding places. 
It is only in winter that they are dangerous. I have 
often, however, roused them up by my approach. I 
once heard a catamount scream in a thick clump of 
bushes not a hundred yards from me — it was just at 
twilight, and made me bound to my feet as if struck 
by a sudden blow, and sent the blood tingling to the 
ends of my toes and fingers. You have heard of elec- 
trical shocks, galvanic batteries, etc. — well, their 
effects are mere slight nervous stimulants compared to 
the wild, unearthly screech of a catamount at night 
in the woods. This fellow was not satisfied with one 
yell, but moving a little way off, coolly squatted down 
and gave another and another, as if enraged at our 



92 THE ADIRONDACK. 

proximity, yet afraid to confront us. They will smell 
a human form an inconceivable distance. 

On another occasion, if I had had a dog with me, I 
should have brought you home a bear skin as a 
trophy. I was passing through a heavy windfall, 
where berry bushes, &c., had grown up over the 
fallen timber, when I suddenly heard a hoarse 
"humph, humph," and then a crashing through the 
bushes. I had come upon a huge bear which was 
quietly picking berries. The fellow put off at a tre- 
mendous rate, and I after him. I should judge he 
was about three hundred yards distant at the outset, 
which he soon increased to four hundred. He made 
for a swamp which he probably crossed, and climbed 
up the steep mountain on the farther side to his den. 

When he went down the bank to the swamp, he 
showed the size of his track, and he must have been a 
rouser. With a dog I should have "treed" him, and 
then he could have been easily shot. The hunter 
with me caught one a short time before, in a trap, on 
this same mountain. Where two large trees had 
fallen across each other so as to make an acute angle, 
he placed a piece of meat, and a strong spiked steel 
trap directly in front of it, covered over with leaves. 



TRAPPING A BEAR. Ifo 

The bear of course could not get at the meat without 
first stepping over the trap, and as bad luck would 
have it, he stepped in. The trap was not fastened in 
its place, but attached by a chain to a long stick 
— the old fellow therefore traveled off till the clog 
caught against a tree. I would not have supposed it 
possible that a bear could make such rending work 
with his teeth as he did. For six feet upward from 
the root, the tree against which he was caught, was 
not only peeled of its bark, but the hard fibres were 
torn away in large splinters, while the clog itself 
was all chewed up, and the ground around furrowed, 
in his struggles and rage. 

Beavers were once found in abundance here, and 
Cheney says he knows where there is a colony of 
them now. Otter and sable are now and then taken, 
but trappers are fast exterminating the fur tribe. 
Yet for game and fish there is no region like it on the 
continent. 

Yours truly, 



X. 



LAKE HENDERSON ^A JULY DAY A SUNSET, AND EVENING 

REVERIE. 

My Dear H : 

I AM just recovering from the exhaustion of the 
last few days' tramping, and, quiet and renovat- 
ed, enjoy everything around me. On the banks of 
Lake Henderson — a charming sheet of water — 
I have been reclining for hours, drinking in the 
fresh breeze at every inspiration. It is a summer 
afternoon, and I know by the atmosphere that 
veils these mountain tops, and the force of the sun 
when I step out of the shade, that it is a hot 
July day. At this very moment, while I am 
stretched at my ease, watching the still lake, 
and those two deer that for the last hour have 






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LAKE HENDERSON. 95 

been wading along the farther shore, drinking the 
cool water, and nibbling the long grass that 
skirts the bank, and lazily beating off the flies, 
you are sauntering up Broadway, or, perhaps, have 
just returned from a stroll in Union Park, and 
are wooing the sea breeze, that, entering the city 
at the Battery, is gently diffusing itself through 
every street and alley. Ah, that sea breeze is the 
only salvation of New York. After a hot, pant- 
ing day, when the fiery pavements and red brick 
walls have concentrated and redoubled the heat, 
how refreshingly, and like a good angel, comes 
that, at first slight, but gradually increasing sea- 
wind, to the fevered system. Moist from its long 
dalliance with the salt waves, its kiss is soft and 

welcome as that of a I beg your pardon, I 

meant to say, as a doctor once remarked to me, 
^' it is a very pleasant stimulant." Yet I know 
Broadway is looking like a furnace just cooled off ; 
and with all your windows and doors thrown 
open, you are still languid, while a sultry and op- 
pressive night awaits you. I pity you from my heart ; 
you have been in Wall street the whole of this scorch- 
ing day, and have not drawn a breath below your 



96 THE ADIRONDACK. 

throat, for the air you live on was never made for the 
lungs. 

You are pale and exhausted, while now and then 
comes over you, a sweet vision of rushing streams 
and waving tree tops, and cool floods of air. I see 
you in imagination, flung at full length upon the sofa, 
and hear that expression of impatience which escapes 
your lips. But here it is delicious — my lungs heave 
freely and strongly, and every moment refreshes in- 
stead of enervates me. Before me spreads away this 
beautiful lake, shaped like a tea leaf, while all along 
the green shores and up the greener mountain side, 
there is a barely perceptible motion among the leaves, 
as if they were so many living things stirring about 
upon a carpet of velvet. Farther on, the Adirondack 
Pass lifts its startling cliff into the air, and farther 
still the solemn mountains stand bathed in the splen- 
dor of the departing sun. The placid surface before 
me is now and then broken by the leap of a trout as 
some poor fly ventures too near where he swims — but 
all else is still and calm. Oh, that I could catch the 
shadows of thoughts and feelings that flit over me. 
There is an atmosphere of beauty around my spirit, 
that fills me with a thousand sweet but vague visions, 



SUNSET. 97 

There is something I would grasp and retain, but 
cannot — would speak, but have not the power to utter 
it. The soul is powerless to act and, 

" Dizzy and drunk with beauty, reels 
In its fullness." 

Just look at the glorious orb of day as it rolls down 
that distant mountain slope, into the gorge which 
seems made on purpose to receive it. Lower and 
and lower sinks the fiery circle, till at last it disap- 
pears, leaving an ocean of flame where it stood, while 
dark shadows begin to creep over the lake and shores. 
On the mountains, there is a bright line of light 
which slowly ascends as if striving to linger around 
the loveliness below. Inch by inch it creeps upward, 
growing brighter as it rises, till at length the highest 
summit is reached— irradiated and forsaken. Its last 
baptism was on that bald peak which blazed up a 
moment like an altar-fire to God, then sunk in dark- 
ness — and now the pall of nio^ht is slowly drawn over 
all. 

Thus, my friend, did this July evening pass with 
me, and with a sigh over the gorgeous dream that had 
vanished, I turned away. Though the night was 



98 THE ADIRONDACK. 

lovely with its stars and sky, which seemed doubly 
brilliant in contrast with the black mountain masses 
that shut out half the heavens ; yet the dash of a 
stream over its broken channel, and the hoot of the 
distant owl conspired to give a loneliness to the scene 
the former could not enliven. I thought of home, and 
those I loved — of life and its lights and shadows — of 
death and its deeper mysteries — of the far world be- 
yond the stars, and that "palace" to which ''even 
the bright sun itself is but a porch lamp." 

But these reveries will not fit me for to-morrow's 
toil, and so good-night to you. 

Yours truly. 



XI. 



TAHAAVUS WITH THE CLOUDS BELOW IT ^A HARD TRAMP 

A TLANK BED ON THE BOREAS RIVER A SORRY 

COMPANY TRAVELING AFTER A BREAKFAST. 

Backwoods, July. 

Dear H : 

There is a path across the mountains to the road 
that leads into the centre of this vast plateau, and to 
the lake region. But I am going out to a settlement 
before I start for that still more untrodden field, filled 
with scenes far more beautiful. This is the last 
morning I shall, probably, ever look on the summit of 
Tahawus. You cannot conceive what an affection 
one has for a majestic old mountain few have ever 
ascended, and on whose top he himself has stood. 
For six years not a foot has profaned this almost inac- 
cessible peak, and I feel as if I had paid a visit to a 
hermit and left him in his solitude, thinking over the 



100 THE ADIRONDACK. 

interview which had broken up the monotony of 
his existence. 

Clouds are rolling around him to-day, and I think of 
what Prof. Benedict, of Burlington, told me. He 
ascended it once for scientific purposes, and made 
experiments on the top which have been of great 
service to the State. He said that the spectacle from 
it one morning in a northeast storm, was sublime 
beyond description. He was in the clear sunlight, 
while an ocean of clouds rolled on below him in vast 
white undulations, blotting out the whole creation 
from his view. At length, under the influence of the 
sun, this limitless deep slowly rent asunder, and the 
black top of a mountain emerged like an island from 
the mighty mass, and then another and another, till 
away, for more than three hundred miles in circum- 
ference, these black conical islands were sprinkled over 
the white bosom of the vapory sea. The lower por- 
tions of the mountains then appeared, while the mist 
collected in the deep gulfs, and lay like a vast ser- jl 
pent over the bed of a river, that wound through the 
forest below, or shot up into fantastic shapes, re- 
sembling towers and domes, and cliffs, and clouds, 
forming, and shifting, and changing in bewildering 



CLOUDS BELOW TAHAWUS. 101 

confusion. It is impossible to conceive anything half 
so strange and wild. 
It seemed as if 

" A single step had freed one from the skirts 
Of the blind vapor — opened to the view 
Glory beyond all glory ever seen 
By waking sense, or by the dreaming soul. 

Oh, 'twas an unimaginable sight ; 

Clouds, mists, streams, waters, rocks, and emerald turf ; 

Clouds of all tincture, rocks, and sapphire sky, 

Confused, commingled, mutually inflamed, 

Molten together, and composing thus, 

Each lost in each, a marvelloiis array 

Of temple, palace, citadel, and huge 

Fantastic pomp of structure without name, 

In fleecy folds voluminous enwrapped. 

Such by the Hebrew prophets were beheld 

In vision — forms uncouth of mightiest power, 

For admiration and mysterious awe." 

We had engaged a teamster to come on a certain 
day and take us out to the settlements. He, however, 
did not make his appearance ; and so, after a fatiguing 
tramp of twelve miles in the morning, we concluded 
to set out on foot, hoping to meet him somewhere in 



102 THE ADIRONDACK. 

the woods. But in this we were disappointed, and 
therefore traveled on until the shades of evening be- 
gan to gather over the forest, admonishing us to seek 
a place of rest for the night. We had now gone six- 
teen miles from Adirondack, which, added to the 
twelve miles in the morning, made nearly thirty miles 
— a severe day's work. Twilight brought us to the 
Boreas River, and here we found a log shanty, which 
some timber cutters had put up the winter before, and 
deserted in the spring. It was a lonely looking thing, 
dilapidated and ruinous, with some straw below, and a 
few loose boards laid across the logs above by way of a 
chamber. I expected to have had some trout for sup- 
per, for a young clergyman who had joined us a day 
or two before, said that on his way up he took sixteen 
out of one pool as fast as he could cast his line. But 
it was nearly dark when we reached the river, and so, 
kindling a blazing fire outside, we dined on our last 
provisions, and turned in. As I said, only a few boards 
were laid across the logs above, leaving the rest of the 
loft perfectly open. By getting on a sort of scaffold- 
ing, and reaching the timbers overhead, we were able 
to swing ourselves up on the scanty platform. After 
I succeeded in gaining this perch, I helped the others 



A PLANK BED. 103 

up ; but the clergyman was rather too heavy, and just 
as he had fairly landed on the boards, one gave way, 
and down he went. I seized him by the collar, while 
he, with one hand fastened to my leg, and with the 
other grasped a timber, and thus succeeded in arrest- 
ing his fall, and probably saved himself a broken 
limb. 

We lay in a row on our backs along this frail scaf- 
folding, filling it up from end to end, so that, if the 
outside ones should roll a half a yard in their sleep, 
they would be precipitated below. A more uncom- 
fortable night I never passed ; and after a short and 
troubled sleep, I lay and watched the chinks in the 
roof, for daylight to appear, till it seemed that 
morning would never come. I resolved never again 
to abandon my couch of leaves for boards, and a 
ruined hut through which vermin swarmed in such 
freedom, that I dreamed I had turned into a spider, 
and speculated a long time on my unusual quantity 
of legs, endeavoring in vain to ascertain their respec- 
tive uses. 

At length the welcome light broke slowly over the 
still forest, and I turned out. Huge stones and 
billets of wood hurled on the roof soon brought forth 



104 THE ADIRONDACK. 

the rest of our companions, and we started off. "We 
had nothing to eat, and seven weary miles were to be 
measured before we could reach the nearest clearing. 
What with the night I had passed, and that seven 
miles' tramp on an empty stomach, I was completely 
knocked up. The clear morning air could not revive 
me — ^my rifle seemed to weigh fifty pounds — my legs 
a hundred and fifty, and I pushed on, more dead than 
alive. At length we emerged into a clearing, and 
there, in a log hut, sat our teamster, quietly eating 
his breakfast. The day before, he had started through 
the forest ; but becoming frightened at the wildness 
and desolation that increased at every step, had turned 
back — choosing to leave us to our fate rather than 
run the risk of making a meal for wolves and bears. 
I could have seen him flogged with a good will, I was 
so indignant. Hungry, cross, and weary, we sat down 
to breakfast, and then stowed ourselves away into a 
lumber wagon, and rode thirty miles to our respectiv3 
stopping-places. The little settlement seemed like a 
large village to me, and the inhabitants the most re- 
fined 1 had ever met. 

Several days' rest here has restored me, and I be- 
gin to feel my system rally, and am conscious of 



A BREAKFAST WELL EARNED. 105 

strength and vitality to which I have been a stranger 
for six months. 

I shall remain here a few days, and then start for 
the lake region — ^the only land route to which is a 
rude road ending at Long Lake. The Adirondack 
chain subsides away there into more regular ridges — it 
is, however, wilder than the region I have left, and 
we shall have to rely for food on what we ourselves 
can catch and kill. 

Yours truly, 



XII. 



A THUNDER STORM A SOLUTION OF LIFE. 

Backwoods, July 12. 
Dear E : 

Thunder storms are not particularly pleasant things 
in the woods, but you are now and then compelled to 
take them. I have just passed through one, and, like 
all grand exhibitions of nature, they awaken pleasure 
in the midst of discomfort. I have never witnessed 
anything sublime, even though dangerous, that did 
not possess attractions, except standing on the deck 
of a ship in the midst of a storm, and looking off 
on the ocean. The wild and guideless waves run- 
ning half-mast high, shaking their torn plumes as 
they come — the turbulent and involved clouds — 
the shrieks of the blast amid the cordage, and groans 
of the ship, combine to make one of the most awful 
scenes in nature. Yet I loathe it and loathe my- 



A THUNDER STORM. 107 

self as I stand or try to stand, reeling to and fro, 
holding on to a belaying pin or rope, for support. 
But give me firm footing, and I love the sea. I 
don't believe Byron ever thought of writing about it 
till he got on shore. The idea of a man thinking, 
much less making poetry while he is staggering like a 
drunken man, is preposterous. 

But I like to have forgot myself — I was reclining 
on the slope of a hill the other day, near a lake, 
from which I had a glorious view of the broken 
chain of the Adirondack. From the ravishing beauty 
of the scene, my mind, as it is wont, fell to musing 
over this mysterious life of ours— on its strange con- 
trasts and stranger destinies, and I wondered how its 
selfishness and sorrow, blindness and madness, pains 
and death, could add to the glory of Grod ; or how 
angels could look on this world without turning away, 
half in sorrow and half in anger, at such a blemished 
universe, when suddenly, over the green summit of the 
far mountain, a huge thunder-head pushed itself into 
view. As the mighty black mass that followed slowly 
after, forced its way into the heavens, darkness began 
to creep over the earth. The song of birds was 
hushed— the passing breeze paused a moment, and 



108 THE ADIRONDACK. 

then swept by in a sudden gust, which whirled the 
leaves and withered branches in wild confusion 
through the air. An ominous hush succeeded, while 
the low growl of the distant thunder seemed forced 
from the deepest caverns of the mountain. 

I lay and watched the gathering elements of 
strength and fury, as the trumpet of the storm sum- 
moned them to battle, till at length the lightning be- 
gan to leap in angry flashes to the earth from the 
dark vfomb of the cloud, followed by those awful and 
rapid reports that seemed to shake the very walls of 
the sky. The pine trees rocked and roared above me 
— for wrath and rage had taken the place of beauty 
and placidity — and then the ram came in headlong 
masses to the earth. Keeping under my shelter of 
bark, I listened to the uproar without, as I had often 
done under an Alpine cliff in the Oberland, waiting 
for the passage of the storm. In a short time its fury 
was spent, and I could hear its retiring roar in the 
distant gorges. The trees stopped knocking their 
green crowns together, and stood again in fraternal 
embrace, while the rapid dripping of the heavy rain 
drops from the leaves, alone told of the deluge that 
had swept overhead. I stole forth again, and but for 



1 



THE RIDDLE OF LIFE. 109 

this ceaseless drip, and the freshened look of every- 
thing about me in the clearer atmosphere, I should 
hardly have known there hai been a change. 

Scarce a half hour had elapsed — yet there the blue 
sky showed itself again over the mountain where 
the dark cloud had been — ^the sun came forth in re- 
doubled splendor, and the tumult was over. Now 
and then a disappointed peal was heard slowly 
traveling over the sky, as if conscious it came too 
late to share the conflict ; but all else was calm, 
and tranquil, and beautiful, as nature ever is after a 
thunder-storm. But while I lay watching that blue 
arch, against which the tall mountain, now greener 
than ever, seemed to lean ; suddenly a single circular 
white cloud appeared over the top, and slowly rolled 
into view, and floated along the radiant west. 
Bathed in the rich sunset — glittering like a white 
robe — ^how beautiful ! how resplendent ! A moving 
glory, it looked as if some angel-hand had just rolled 
it away from the golden gate of heaven. I watched 
it till my spirit longed to fly away and sink in its 
bright foldings. And then I thought were I in the 
midst of it, it would be found a heavy bank of fog — 
damp and chill like the morning mist, which obscures 



110 THE ADIRONDACK. 

the vision and ruffles the spirit, till it prays for one 
straggling sunbeam to disperse the gloom. But seen 
at that distance — shone upon by that setting sun — 
how glorious ! And here, methought, I had a solution 
of my mystery of life. With its agitations and 
changes — its blasphemies and songs — its revelries and 
violence — its light and darkness — its ecstasies and 
agonies — its life and death — so strangely blent — it is 
a mist^ a gloomy fog", that chills and wearies us as 
we walk in its midst. Dimmmg our prospect, it 
shuts out the spiritual world beyond us, till we weep 
and pray for the rays of heaven to disperse the gloom. 
But seen by angels and spiritual beings from afar — 
shone upon hy God's perfect government and grand 
designs of love — it may, and doubtless does, appear 
as glorious as that evening cloud to me. The bright- 
ness of the throne is cast over us, and its glory 
changes this turbulent scene into a harmonious part 
of his vast whole. " G-od's ways are not as our ways, 
neither are his thoughts as our thoughts." After it 
has all passed, and the sun of futurity breaks on the 
scene, light and gladness will bathe it in undying 
splendor. 



A LESSON FROM NATURE. Ill 

I turned away with that summer cloud fastened in 
my memory forever, and thankful for the thunder- 
storm that had taught my heart so sweet a lesson. 

Yours truly, 



XIII. 



A RIDE THROUGH THE FOREST A LEAN DINNER CHE- 

NEy's cousin SWIMMING A LAKE WITH HORSES. 

Backwoods, August. 
DearH : 

I AM off again for the woods — ^resolved to penetrate 
to the heart of this wild country, whose scenery can- 
not be matched this side of the Alps. For fifty miles, 
we can with care go on horseback, and then we must 
be our own beasts of burden. 

Our company consists of five — a young clergyman, 
whom I persuaded to try bivouacking in the forest, in- 
stead of lounging at Saratoga Springs for his health, 
R — ffe, formerly a merchant in Maiden Lane, but now 
a thorough backwoodsman, cutting down forests and 
putting up mills, &c., and Doctor T — 11, and young 
P . 

It was a bright morning, as, mounted on fresh 



LUNCHING WITHOUT FOOD. 113 

horses, with our rifles on our shoulders, we passed 
from the more open settlements, which gradually 
grew thinner and wilder, and entered the unbroken 
forest. In the trouble we were at to obtain an extra 
horse, and afterwards a saddle, we forgot to take pro- 
visions for the way ; so, after traveling for nearly thirty 
miles, we found ourselves on the banks of the Boreas 
River, (our old friend, with whom we encamped a 
week or two since, some thirty miles to the north- 
east,) weary and hungry, and twelve miles of forest to 
the nearest clearing. It was now one o'clock, and we 
had been in the saddle since early in the morning. 
Our horses needed food and rest, so did we ; but the 
former was easier obtained for our beasts than for us. 
Taking off their saddles and tying them head and foot 
to prevent them from straying away, we turned them 
loose, to browse in the forest. "W — d hunted around 
for berries to allay his hunger, while the doctor smok- 
ed his pipe and chewed spruce gum which he peeled 
from the trees, by way of stomach-stayers. R — ffe 
and myself thought of trying the trout ; but the 
heavily timbered and tangled banks forbade all access 
to the stream except by plunging in. Hungrier than I 
ever remember to have been before, I floundered 



114 THE ADIRONDACK. 

through the woods down the stream, seeking in vain 
for an opening ; until, driven to desperation, I jumped 
in. But fly fishing with a crooked and green stick is 
rather unsatisfactory business, and though raising 
some twenty, I succeeded in taking only one, and he 
of small dimensions. Just as I had got him nicely 
stowed away in my pocket, a rifle shot — ^the signal to 
return — called me back. "When I reached our resting 
place, I found my companions all in the saddle and 
ready for departure. " What !" said I, " are you 
going?" "Yes, let us hurry on I" "Not I," I re- 
plied, " till I devour this trout, for between my long 
ride and fast, and the effort to catch him, I am on the 
extreme limit of starvation. Come, doctor, strike me 
a fire while I dress him." So the doctor kindled 
a blaze, while I cut off" the trout's head on a stone, 
and spitted him on a stick, ready for roasting. A few 
minutes in the blaze rendered him fit for my not over- 
nice palate, and I chewed him with a vigor I had 
never before exhibited, and when his tail finally dis- 
appeared, I heaved a sigh like one whose days of hap- 
piness are over. I looked around in despair, for there 
was nothing else eatable to be seen ; so mounting 
my steed, I pushed on after the rest of the company. 



nature's temple. 115 

Straggling on in Indian file, we went in a sort of 
hurry scurry through the woods, saying nothing, but 
each one evidently aware that he could not get to a 
supper too soon. Over mountains and across swamps, 
through a break in the Adirondack chain, which we 
here again struck ; we urged on our jaded animals, 
with naught but the rush of the wild bird's wing, and 
the scared look of the pheasant or the d.eer, as he hur- 
ried from our path, to break the monotony of the ride. 
Yet this traveling along a narrow path in the forest is 
a right kingly march. Only think of riding all day 
through a magnificent colonnade, the columns lifting 
a hundred feet above your head, and crowned with 
Corinthian capitals, made after a richer model than 
the acanthus leaf. How the soul awakes in this new 
existence, and casting off the fetters that has bound 
it, rejoices in broader liberty, and leaps with a new, 
exultant feeling. The green, moving arch over your 
head does not confine you as it sheds down its fresh- 
ness and fragrance on the path, for it reveals between 
its glorious fret- work of leaves and twigs a limitless 
dome beyond, that carries away the soul to farther, 
freer, brighter regions. Oh I how I love the glorious 
woods, and the sense of freedom they bring. How 



116 THE ADIRONDACK. 

can one stay where he is cheated, exasperated, slan- 
dered, and mortified, when he has the broad forest to 
rejoice in, and such companions only as his own choice 
may select ? 

Towards night, we came to a clearing, the five 
families of which composed the entire town. Just 
before sunset, our host, a cousin of Cheney, and my- 
self, went to a lake close by, on the opposite shore of 
which two deer were quietly grazing. Stepping into 
a boat, we endeavored to get within shot, but a loon 
a little way off, kept up such a loud and continual 
scream, that they were more than usually cautious, 
and soon moved away. Cheney had a huge black dog 
with which I became on the most intimate terms, 
much to the surprise of his master who declared he 
had never before seen him so playful with a stranger. 
I told him I did not doubt it, for hunters had often 
made the same remark to me, but that I prided my- 
self on only one quality — the power to win the love of 
children and dogs. He said he was an excellent dog 
for bears, and only a few months before attacked one 
on the side-hill opposite the house, and kept him ai 
bay all day. Soon as Bruin attempted to run he 
would fasten on his haunches, thus compelling him to 



SIGN FOR HIGHWAY. 117 

turn and fight. Cheney was away at the time — but 
on returning at evening, he heard his dog barking 
furiously in the woods, and taking down his rifle, 
went to him, and shot the bear. 

Next morning we plunged again into the forest, and 
as we rode along, I noticed trees at certain intervals, 
marked '' H," which, after vainly attempting to ac- 
count for, I finally enquired the reason of. '' Oh, it 
means highivay^'''' was the reply. This was a rather 
comical mode of telling one he was on the highway, 
still I was thankful for the information. In another 
place we came upon fires built over a huge rock in 
the middle of the track, compelling us to take a semi- 
circle in the woods. On inquiring the cause of this, 
to me, singular procedure, I was told that settlers, 
hired by the State, were working on the road, and in 
the absence of drills, took this method of breaking the 
rocks to pieces. Being sand-stone, the fire slowly 
crumbled them apart, so that the crowbar or lever 
could remove them. I thought of Hannibal, and his 
fire and vinegar on the rocks of the San Bernard ; and 
men seemed going back to their primitive state. In- 
stead of cutting down the trees that stood in the way, 
they hewed ofl:' the roots, and then hitching a rope to 



118 THE ADIRONDACK. 

the tops, pulled them over with oxen. And thus 
they work and toil away here in the woods — yet not 
wholly heedless of the great world without. How 
strange it seems to behold men thus occupied — living 
contentedly fifty miles from a post office or village — 
and hear their inquiries about the war with Mexico, 
asking of events that have been forgotten months ago 
in New York ! 

The path grew rapidly worse as we proceeded — in 
some places endangering the limbs of our animals, and 
indeed our own necks. Sometimes we were up to the 
girths in a morass, and again leaping a huge tree — 
but at last we arrived at Long Lake, and it was lite- 
rally reaching the end of the journey. The path as we 
approached the shore, had dwindled to a mere Indian- 
trail, and there entirely disappeared. "With no road 
around, and no sign of life in sight, save a solitary log 
hut on the farther side of the lake, we waded up and 
down the shore till stopped by the rooks — looking in 
vain for some way of escape. Just then a flock of 
wild ducks shot out of a small bay at our feet, when 
crack ! crack ! went our rifles. The next moment a 
boat put off" from the opposite shore, rowed by a boy. 
"Where is the path," was our inquiry as he ap- 



SWIMMING HORSES. 119 

proached, " that leads along the lake to some clear- 
ing ?" *' You can't go," was the reply, " there hain't 
none." '' But what shall we do with our horses ?" " I 
don't know." — After planning awhile, we concluded to 
fasten them in the woods, and bring over grass in the 
boat. So, tying them to the trees, and hanging our 
saddles on the branches, we crossed over. With all 
Hamilton County for a stable, our jaded animals 
passed the first night. 

But carrying provender across the lake took up too 
much time, and therefore the next morning we con- 
cluded, after a long consultation, to swim them over. 

W d first rode his powerful black horse, which the 

day before, by his amazing strength, had saved him 
from a broken neck or limb, into the lake. The noble 
animal was accustomed to the swamps and the forest, 
but not to deep water, and he sunk almost to his ears. 

W d, somewhat frightened, as he found himself 

submerged to the armpits, began to pull sharply on 
the rein, which brought the horse nearly perpendicu- 
lar in the water, with his fore feet pawing the air. 
The more erect the poor animal stood, the harder he 
was forced to pull the rein to keep from sliding off. 
Looking up, I saw his danger — for, thrown backward 



120 THE ADIRONDACK. 

SO by the bit, the struggling animal would, in a 
minute more, have fallen over upon him. I shouted 
out, '' Let go the rein instantly, and grasp the mane !" 
He did so, and the horse relieved from the strain on 
his head, righted himself and brought his rider safely 
to the shore. In swimming the lake, however, he 
sunk to his ears, and groaned and grunted with every 
stroke. Another would not swim at all ; but the mo- 
ment he got beyond his depth, flung himself upon his 
side compelling us to hold his head on the stern of 
the boat and tow him across. The rest took to their 
work more kindly, especially a sorrel mare, which 
swam without an effort — ^the ridge of her back just 
skimming the surface, and her motion easy and steady 
as that of a swins^. 

"We were right glad to reach the opposite forest ; — 
and dragging our dripping beasts up the rocky bank, 
threaded our way to the only hut we had seen since 
morning. 

Yours, &c. 



XIV. 



CAMPING GROUND MITCHEL THE INDIAN GUIDE TROUT 

FISHING ON A LARGE SCALE NIGHT. 

Long Lake, Aug. 10. 

Dear H : 

Let me introduce you to our camp. It is a little 
after noon, and a most lovely day, and there, at the 
foot of the lake, back a few rods, in the forest, is 
burning a camp-fire. On a stick that is thrust into 
the ground and leans over a log, hangs a small kettle 
of potatoes — a little one side is suspended to a tree a 
noble buck just dressed, some of the nicest bits of 
which are already roasting in a pan over the fire. In 
a low shantee, made of hemlock bark, entirely open in 
front, lazily recline the young clergyman and the doc- 
tor, watching with most satisfied looks the cooking of 
the savory venison. On the other side are stretched 
the weary hounds in profound slumber. An old 



122 THE ACmONDACK. 

hunter is watching, with knife in hand, the progress of 
a johnny-cake he is baking in the ashes, giving every 
now and then a most comical hitch to his waistbands 
while, as if to keep up the balance, one whole side of 
his face twitches at the same time. Close by him is 
my Indian guide whom I obtained yesterday, coldly 
scrutinizing my new modeled rifle. Taciturn and 
emotionless as his race always are, he neither smiles 
nor speaks. 

Knowing that his curiosity was excited, I remarked, 
" Mitchell, I wish you would try my rifle, for I have 
some doubts whether it is perfectly correct." With- 
out saying a word, he took up an axe, and going to a 
distant tree struck out a chip, leaving a white spot. 
Returning as silent as he went, he raised my gun to 
his face, where it rested for a moment immovable as 
stone, then spoke sharp and quick through the forest. 
The bullet struck the white spot in the centre. He 
handed back the rifle without uttering a word — that 
shot was a better comment on its correctness than 
anything he could say. 

Our venison and johnny-cake and potatoes were 
at length done ; and each of us peeling ofl' a bit 
of clean hemlock bark for a plate, we sat down 



A DINNER SCENE. 123 

on the leaves, and placing our bark dishes across 
our legs, with a sharp stick in one hand for a fork, 
and our pocket knives in the other, commenced 
our repast. I have dined in palaces, hotels, and 
amid ancient ruins, but never so right royally before. 
"We were kings here, with our rifles by our side, and 
no one to dispute our sway ; and then such a palace 
of countless columns encompassing us, while the 
gentle murmur of the tiny wave as it laid its cheek 
on the smooth pebbles below, made harmony with the 
refreshing breeze that rustled in the tree tops and 
lifted the ashes of our already smouldering camp fire. 
I thought last winter, at the Carlton House, that the 
venison made a dish that might please a gourmet, but 
it was tasteless, savorless, compared to this venison, 
cut off from the. freshly killed carcass, and roasted in 
the open forest. A clear stream near by furnished us 
with a richer beverage than wine ; while the fresh air, 
and gleaming lake, and sweet islands sleeping on its 
bosom, gave to the spirits a healthier excitement than 
society. 

After the repast was finished, we stretched our- 
selves along the ground and smoked our cigars, and 
talked awhile of trout and deer anJ bears ;iii 1 



124 THE ADIRONDACK. 

wolves and moose. At length the Indian arose and 
made preparations for departure. Taking our rifles 
and fishing tackle, we pushed our boats into the lake, 
and made for Raquette River, the outlet of the lake, 
and thence into Cold River. 

I wish I could give you some conception of this 
stream. At this season of the year it is almost as 
moveless as a pond, while its waters are clear as fluid 
crystal, revealing a smooth and pebbly bottom. The 
shores of both the rivers are all trodden over with 
moose and deer and bear tracks. During the after- 
noon we had endeavored to take some trout, of 
which Mitchell told me the river was full. But the 
unruflled surface of the stream, combined with its 
pellucid waters, and an unclouded sun, made every 
fish fly to his lurking place long before we got sight 
of him. Under the deep shadow of an overhanging 
and wooded bank, Mitchell at length took one, while 
I had the pleasure of seeing a two pounder rise to my 
fly with open mouth and dilated eyes ; but just as he . 
was going to snap it, he caught a glimpse of us, and 
darted like a flash of lightning to the bottom, from 
whence no after-coaxing could lure him. But as the 
sun went down T had better success. Being the only 



TROUT FISHING. 125 

one who used a fly, I took all the trout. They were, 
however, of a small size and difficult to hook, for I 
had nothing but a common pole cut from the forest, 
on which to rig my line. I had left my light and 
delicate rod in the settlements, as I should advise 
every one to do, who endeavors to penetrate this path- 
less region. When one is compelled to carry his own 
rifle, overcoat, and underclothing, and sometimes his 
cooking utensils, and that, too, with a walk of 
twenty miles on a stretch before him, he would do 
well not to lumber himself up with fishing rods. 

But when the sun at length totally disappeared be- 
hind the mountains, and the surface of Cold River, 
overshadowed by an impenetrable forest, became black 
as ink, the trout left their retreats; and in a short 
time the water was in a foam with their constant 
leaping. Where but a short time before we had 
passed, looking down through the clear depths 
without seeing a single finny rover, now there 
seemed an innumerable multitude. Here a sudden 
bold boimd — there a long shoot as a fierce fellow 
swept along after a large fly, kept the bosom of the 
stream in a bubble. The Indian and my companions 
had stiff* poles, cord lines, and large hooks, with a 



126 THE ADIRONDACK. 

piece of raw venison for bait. This they would 
'^ skitter^'' along the surface, and the moment it 
caught the eye of a trout, away he would rush with a 
leap and plunge after it. I found that my light tackle 
was entirely out of place in this new mode of fishing, 
for while I was drowning one big fellow, those in the 
boat with me would tak6 half a dozen. Besides the 
time for fishing was short, for twilight had already 
settled on the forest — and so, after in my hurry break- 
ing two or three snells, I, too, rigged on a cord line, 
big hook, and piece of venison. I never saw anything 
like it in my life — it was a constant leap, roll, and 
plunge there around our lines — and some of them 
such immense fellows for brook trout. In a half an 
hour we took at least a half a bushel, many of them 
weighing three pounds, and few less than a pound. 

At length, however, it became too dark to fish, and 
a single rifle shot of the Indian recalling our scat- 
tered boats, we started for the camp. 

Turning the head of our boat, we drifted down to 
Raquette River, and then pulled for the lake. This 
was a mile of hard rowing, and it was late before we 
reached the outlet. One skiff having started sooner 
than we, was already at the camp — ^the cheerful fire 



A TROUT SUPPER. 127 

of which burst on us through the trees as we rounded 
a point of the outlet, and shot upon the bosom of the 
quiet lake. '' Look, R — fFe," I exclaimed, '' yonder 
is the camp fire, and now another light moves down 
to the beach, where they are dressing the trout for 
supper." He sprang to the oars, and the light boat 
fled like a wild deer toward that cheerful flame. 
Islands and rocks flew by, and under a cloudless sky, 
and myriads of bright and glorious stars, we sped 
gaily on, till, at length, the boat grated on the pebbly 
beach, and a joyous shout that made the solemn old 
forest ring, went up from the camp and shore. In a 
moment all was bustle and preparation for supper, and 
the noblest dish of trout I ever ate I took there by 
fire light in the woods. My appetite, it is true, was 
sharp, and we made a sad inroad into our pile, of 
fish. 

After supper we lay around in every variety of 
attitude upon the dry earth, lazily snuffing up the fra- 
grance of the woods, and looking off" on the still sur- 
face of the lake in whose clear depths the stars of 
heaven stood trembling, and listening to wild hunting 
stories, interspersed now and then with flashes of 
broad humor, till at length the deep breathing of the 



128 THE ADIRONDACK. 

Indian admonished us that we, too, needed repose to 
prepare us for the toils of the next day. We did not 
retire to our rooms and blow out the lights, but 
spreading a blanket on the earth and leaves, stretched 
ourselves upon it in a row, and with our feet to the 
blazing fire, composed ourselves to rest — ^that is, all 
the party but myself. I sat up for some time by 
the crackling fire, and watched the others as they 
dropped one after another to sleep, until exhausted 
and weary, I also stretched myself beside the Indian 
with a log for my pillow, between two knots of which 
I placed my head to keep it from rolling. 

A little after midnight I awoke — the wind had 
shifted to the east, and was blowing strong and chill, 
sending a rapid swell on the beach, and a loud mur- 
mur though the cedar tops overhead. The fire had 
died away, except a few smouldering brands, while 
the bright stars, those ceaseless watchers, looked 
kindly down from their high sentinel posts in heaven. 
The wild and lonely scream of the northern diver, 
came at intervals through the darkness, as he floated 
far away on the water ; and night, solemn night, with 
the great forest, was around me. I strolled down to 
the lake shore, and let the breeze fall on my fevered 



A SUDDEN WAKE-UP. 129 

head, while the glimmer of the dying embers of our 
camp-fire through the trees rendered the scene doubly 
lonely. I returned, and seizing the axe, soon had a 
bright and crackling fire sending its light over the 
sleepers. The sparks, borne higher and higher by the 
wind, danced about in the forest, and shed a clear 
light on a noble white hound that lay sleeping in 
careless ease at the foot of a tree. Tall trunks stood 
column-like and still, on every side— gradually grow- 
ing dimmer and dimmer, till lost in a mass of black- 
ness, and contrasting strangely with the motion and 
roar of the tops, through which the wind swept in fitfnl 
gusts. Again I stretched myself on the ground, and 
woke no more till light was dawning in the east, and 
then with a shudder and start as though a tomahawk 
were gleaming over my head. The Indian's dog had 
crawled upon me, and lay heavily along my body, his 
head resting on my bosom, his mouth to my mouth, 
while a low growl which issued from his chest, 
startled the Indian by my side. I never was so struck 
with the alertness of an Indian. I am not slow to 
wake myself, especially in a case like this ; but 
before I opened my eyes, Mitchell was on his feet ; 

and as T looked i\]), I saw him standing over ma with 
6* 



130 THE ADIRONDACK. 

his piercing black eye fixed on the dog. " Be still !" 
he exclaimed, and then, as if talking to himself, 
added, " it is strange, but he is watching you, he 
smelt danger." His keen nose probably winded some 
wild animal prowling about our camp — attracted 
thither by the savory smell of venison. I gently car- 
essed the noble fellow, and rose from my hard couch. 
The whole group were standing listlessly around the 
fire, yawning and stretching, while the few jokes that 
were cracked created only a mockery of laughter. 

Yours truly. 



XV. 



A CAMP SCENE IN THE MORNING A SHOT AT AN EAGLE 

A DEER CHASE. 

Long Lake, August 1. 
Dear H : 

My last left us yawning and stretching around our 
camp fire a little after daylight in the morning, look- 
ing and feeling stupid and heavy — but a fresh wash 
in a mountain rill near by restored us to life, while 
the answers to the inquiries how each other had slept, 
brought back the merriment that seldom flags in 
the woods. "Well, R — ffe, how did you sleep?" 
" Pretty well, only H — Icept punching me to keep me 
off from him." "And how did you sleep, H — ?" 
" As I'll never sleep again. I was on the lower hill- 
side, and served as a block to the whole of you. You 
rolled down against me and wedged me in so tight 
that I couldn't, with my utmost efibrt, turn over, to 



132 THE ADIRONDACK. 

save my life." " Mr. W — d, was you broke of your 
rest?" "No: I slept pretty well, considering the 
circumstances." Turning to Mr. P — , I remarked, 
" Well, Mr. P — , I saw you get up once when I rose 
to put some wood upon the fire. You lay rolled up in 
your blanket like a mummy, while the sparks from 
the fire fell in a shower upon you. I thought you 
would find it rather too hot before morning." "I 
don't remember getting up at all," he replied ; "proba- 
bly the roaring fire you made did cause the smoke to 
choke me. I never waked but once, and then I was 
startled by the sound of an axe ; I opened my eyes, 
;ind saw you splitting down the stump — the root of 
which I had made my pillow- — directly over my head." 
This, of course, I stoutly denied, amidst the uproari- 
ous laugh of the company. I then remembered the 
frightened look he gave me, as I was cutting into a 
stump near by him,, and in the next moment roll 
rapidly in his blanket down the hill. The suddenness 
and oddity of the movement surprised me at the time, 
but now it was all explained. . In his half- wakened 
state, he saw the bit of my axe gleaming in the fire 
light, and thou2:ht it was descendinsf directlv on 



SHOT AT AN EAGLK. 133 

his skull. No wonder he performed those sudden 
evolutions ! 

At length Mitchell having finished his pipe, called 
to the hounds, " Come, Rover, come Maj," and with 
shouldered- rifle moved down to the shore. The night 
before, as we sat around the camp fire, we bid for the 
first fire at the deer we should start in the morning. 
I outbid the rest, when Mitchell dryly remarked, " I'll 
take you in my boat." He had not forgotten his 
promise, or rather the reward, and so beckoning to me, 
we started off. After rowing a mile or two, we 
landed the old hunter and the dogs, who soon disap- 
peared in the forest. Just then, Mitchell pointed to a 
lofty pine tree, towering above the surrounding forest, 
on an upper limb of which sat a grey eagle in her 
nest. " I believe I'll try to get a shot at her," said 
he, and started off. With the stealthiness of his race, 
he crept and dodged through the woods till I thought 
he never looidd shoot. I watched the noble bird 
through my glass, and could see her head ever and 
anon turn quickly as she heard the snapping of a 
stick, or rustling of a leaf, which Mitchell with all his 
care could not prevent, till, at length, rising on her 



134 



THE ADIRONDACK. 



nest, she cast her piercing eye on every side, and then 
detecting the danger, gathered her strong pinions and 
soared away. Wheeling round and round the place 
of her young, she finally stooped on the top of an 
immense pine tree. Again and again she rose and 
circled away, and then alighted where she could 
overlook her offspring. She had discovered the In- 
dian, but the love of her young was stronger than her 
fear, and she would not leave them. At length the 
sharp crack of a rifle rang though the woods, and the 
noble bird, unscathed, rose and sailed over where I 
stood. I lifted my rifle and again let it fall, saying to 
myself, " This time, at least, you shall not fall a 
victim to parental love." Mitchell soon joined me, 
and I remarked, "Well, you missed her." "Yes, it 
wants close squinting to pick one off from the top of 
such a pine as that." 

Pushing off, we rowed over to an island where we 
could have a fair view of the lake on every side, and 
awaited the deer ; and here I felt some of the miseries 
of a hunter's life. A cold east wind swept the bosom 
of the lake, and I sat and shivered, thinking there 
would be vastly more poetry in staying by the camp- 



A DEER CHASE. 135 

fire, and eating venison already killed, than waiting 
for that which was yet running on the mountain. 
Mitchell climbed a cedar and stood looking over 
the broken top to catch the first cry of the hounds 
as they opened on the track, while I sat with my 
back against a hemlock, my rifle across my lap, 
and my coat collar turned up over my ears, wish- 
ing it was over with, and thinking the while of 
breakfast, as my eye turned ever and anon, most 
wistfully down the lake, where R ffe was row- 
ing backwards and forwards from the camp to a 
rock in the water, on which we had spread our 
venison, killed the day before. The dry east wind 
proved too strong — ^the dogs could not follow the 
scent, and soon appeared again, trotting along the 
shore with the hunter. 

It was not long after this, before I was discussing 
a noble trout, that lay, fresh from the pan, along 
my bark plate. 

After breakfast, our little fleet of three skiffs, 
was launched, and we paddled slowly up the, lake. 
In the mean time, the east wind, which always 
poisons me, died away, and this beautiful sheet of 



136 THE ADIRONDACK. 

water lay like a mirror in which the blue heaveas 
were quietly gazing on their own beauty. After 
rowing two or three miles, Mitchell remarked it was 
a good time to start a deer. I hailed the boats, 
and in a few minutes we were in close consulta- 
tion as to the best mountain on which to put out 

the dogs. "Anywhere," said P"^ , "will fetch 

one; but that mountain (pointing to the left,) is 
the best, for the echo of the cry of the hounds 

comes down from it in grand style. I want H 

to hear the echo of the chase along its sides 
once, — it is more blood-stirring than the sound of 
a trumpet." Sending one boat on a mile and a 
half a head, and one back, Mitchell and myself 
landed the hunter and dogs and took a middle sta- 
tion. They had scarcely reached the shore, before 
the dogs opened. Pushing back into the lake, I 
saw the white hound appear on the beach at a 
little distance, shoot backward and forward a few mo- 
ments with his nose to the ground, then utter a 
loud deep cry. "Ah," said I to myself, "that has 
started at least one 'noble stag,' from his couch of 
leaves, and he stands this moment with dilated 
nostril and extended neck, while a pang of terror 



A DEER CHASE. .137 

shoots through his wild heart as the yell again 
ringing through the forest, tells him that the voice 
is on his track." 

The west wind had now risen, and we sat and 
rocked on the waves, listening to the furious out- 
cry that the mountain sent down to the water. 
The green forest shut in both hounds and deer, but 
you could follow the chase by the rapidly flying 
sound along the steep acclivities. How earnest and 
eager is the bay of a blood-hound on a fresh track — 
ah, it was exciting, cruel as it may seem to some. 
Suddenly the boat, a mile and a half above us, shot 
out like an arrow, from behind a rock, and flew 
over the water. The qnick eye of the Indian caught 
it, and exclaiming " the deer has took to the water 
there," sprang to his oars. "It is not possible," 1 
replied; "it is scarcely half an hour since the dogs 
started." He stopped, rose to his full length in 
the boat — stood for a moment like a statue, then 
dropping on his seat, he exclaimed, " it is," and 
seized the oars. I did not deem it possible he could 
discover it that distance with his naked eye, but 
he had been trained from infancy in the forest. In 
that short time such a change had passed over the 



138 THE ADIRONDACK. 

man, that I scarcely knew him. Taciturn, slow 
and indolent in his movements, I had not thought 
him capable of sudden excitement. But now the 
energy and fire of ten men seemed concentrated in 
him. His strokes fell with a rapidity and power I 
had never before witnessed. I have seen men row 
for wagers and for dear life; but never saw blows 
tell on a boat as did those of his. 

It is true the skiff was light, for it was made to 
be carried on one man's shoulders across the country 
from lake to lake — it is true also, that I threw 
myself on the paddle with which I steered, with 
all the strength I was master of; but the strokes 
of Mitchell seemed each time to lift the cockle-shell 
from the lake. As he fell back on the oars, so 
rapid was the passage of the boat, that the water, 
as it parted before it, rose up on each side as high 
as his shoulders, and foamed like a torrent past me. 
On, on we sped like a winged creature, when a rifle 
shot rang dull and heavy in the distance, and the 
wind lifting the smoke bore it down towards us. 
"Did he hit him?" exclaimed Mitchell. I dropped 
my paddle and lifting my glass to my eye, replied, 
"No, and it is a buck. I see his antlers, and he is 



A DEER CHASE. 139 

bearing right down on us. Pull, pull away my brave 
fellow." He did pull, and so did I, and we flew over 
the surface. The other boat had been compelled to 
lay-to a moment to mend an oar, which had given 
us the advantage, but it was now again sent with 
no stinted strokes down the lake. At length I could 
see the head and antlers of the noble buck, as with 
dilated nostrils and terror-stricken glance, he swam 
and doubled on his pursuers. ''Hold," I exclaimed, 
as he glanced away towards the shore. The boat fell 
into the trough of the waves just as I raised my 
rifle to my shoulder, and the little cockle-shell rocked 
so like mad on the water, and my frame was quiver- 
ing so with the exhausting effort of the last few 
minutes, that the muzzle of my piece described all 
sorts of mathematical diagrams around the head of 
the deer, as I endeavored to make it bear for a 
single second upon it. I could not shoot — but "fire! 
fire!" shouted Mitchell, and ''fire" it was. The bul- 
let struck just under his throat, throwing the water 
over his head, while he made a desperate spring and 
pulled for the shore. Shame on me, but I might as 
well have shot on horseback under a full gallop. 
At that moment the other boat flew like a spirit 



140 THE ADIRONDACK. 

past, and crack went the rifle of W — d. He missed, 
and again our skiff was rapidly dividing the waves 
before her, while in scarcely more time than I have 
been relating it, another ball was in my gun, and 
I exclaimed, "Now, Mitchell, as we approach him, 
throw the head of the boat on the waves, so the 
motion shall be steady, and if I miss him, I will 
fling my rifle into the lake." As we came up, a 
single stroke of the oar sent her round, and as she 
rose and fell on the short sea, I "watched my time" 
and pulled. A desperate plunge and a bloody streak 
upon the water, told that the bullet had found the 
life-blood. Struggle on, bold fellow, but your life 
is reached, and never again shall your foot press 
the mountain-side! Just then another shot struck 
the water close by our boat, glanced, and also en- 
tered the deer. He bowed his antlered head in the 
waves, and turned over on his side, while the short, 
convulsive efforts told of his death agony. A few 
strokes of the oar, and our boat lay alongside — the 
knife of the Indian entered his throat, and the deed 
was done. I raised him by the horns, and towed 
him slowly along toward the shore. The excitement 



A DEER CHASE. 141 

of the chase was over, and as I gazed on the wild, yet 
mild and gentle eye of the noble creature, now glaz- 
ing in death, a feeling of remorse arose in my heart. 
I could have moralized an hour over the beautiful 
form as it floated on the water. The velvet antlers 
(they are now in their velvet) gave a more harmless 
aspect to the head than the stubborn horn, and I 
almost wished to recall him to life. It seemed impos- 
sible that, a few minutes before, that delicate limbed 
creature was treading in all the joy of freedom his 
forest home. How wild had been his terror, as the 
fierce cry of the hound first opened on his track ! 
— ^how swift the race down the mountain side, and 
how free and daring his plunge from the rock into the 
wave ! How noble his struggles for life. But the 
bold swimmer had been environed by foes too strong 
for him, and he fell at last, where he could not 
even turn at bay. The delicate nostril was relaxed 
in death, and the slender limbs stiff and cold. 

I was awakened from my moralizing by Mitchell, 
who that moment ceased rowing and gave a call. 
The gallant white hound had followed the track of 
the deer to the water, where he stood perplexed and 



142 THE ADIRONDACK. 

anxious till the first rifle shot fell over the lake. 
He then plunged in, and had ever since been swim- 
ming after us in the chase. "We lay-to, and took 
the noble fellow in and then pulled for shore. 



XVI. 



A MAGNIFICENT PROSPECT FOURTEEN HOURS WITHOUT 

FOOD. 

Owl's Head, August 5. 



Bear H : 

Have you ever been on the summit of the Righi, in 
Switzerland ? It is said to command the finest view 
in that land of magnificent prospects. I once stood 
on its top, and saw the sun come up in his glory, till 
forests, lakes, rivers, and villages sprang into life and 
beauty, and the whole range of the Bernese Alps, from 
Sentis to the' Jungfrau, glittered in red and gold, while 
the vast snow fields slept in deep shadow between. 

My eye never opened on a more glorious panorama, 
and I stood amid its surpassing beauties in silent 
amazement. The view, it is said, embraces a tract of 
country three hundred miles in circumference, with 
eleven lakes in sight from the summit, though I never 



144 THE ADIRONDACK. 

could make out more than half that number. The 
Righi has become almost a classic name, while the 
''Owl's Head," from which I date my letter, has 
never yet dared to show its face in civilized life. In- 
deed, the. cognomen has been given by a man wander- 
ing by,- from its shape, and it waits a new christening. 
A forester here has requested me to give it a name, 
promising it shall keep it. If you will send me one^ 
I will see to the baptism, and you shall have the 
honor of naming a mountain ; which is far more im- 
posing than giving a name to a baby. It deserves a 
good one, for insignificant as it may seem, to plant 
your feet on an "owl's head," it looks off on a pro- 
spect that would make your heart stand still in your 
bosom. Look away toward that distant horizon ! In 
its broad sweep round the heavens, it takes in nearly 
four hundred miles, while between slumbers an ocean 
• — but it is an ocean of tree tops. Conceive, if you 
can, this vast expanse stretching on and spreading 
away, till the bright green becomes shaded into a deep 
black, with not a sound to break the solitude, and not 
a hand's breadth of land in view throughout the 
whole. It is a vast forest-ocean, with mountain- 
vidges for billows, rolling smoothly and gently on like 



GLORIOUS PROSPECT. i4o 

the subsiding swell of a storm. I stand on the edge 
of a precipice which throws its naked wall far down to 
the tops of the fir trees below, and look off on this 
surpassingly wild and strange spectacle. The life that 
villages, and towns, and cultivated fields give to a 
landscape is not here, neither is there the barrenness 
and savageness of the view from Tahawus. It is all 
vegetation — luxuriant, gigantic vegetation ; but man 
has had no hand in it. It stands as the Almighty 
made it, majestic and silent, save when the wind or 
the storm breathes on it, waking up its myriad low- 
toned voices, which sing 

" The wild profound eternal bas8 
In nature's anthem." 

Oh, how still and solemn it slumbers below me ; 
while far away yonder, to the left, shoot up into the 
heavens the massive peaks of the Adirondack chain, 
mellowed here, by the distance, into beauty. Yet 
there is one relief to this vast forest solitude — like 
gems sleeping in a moss bed, lakes are everywhere 
glittering in the bright sunshine. How calm and 
trustingly they repose on the bosom of the wilder- 
ness I Thirty-six, a hunter tells me, can be counted 
from this summit, though I do not see over twenty. 



146 THE ADIRONDACK. 

There, like a snake crawling out from the mountain 
gorge, comes Long Lake, with its glittering head — 
and yonder is Forked Lake, and farther on Raquette 
Lake — and farther still, Grreat and Little Tuppers 
Lake, and away, a mere luminous point — but I w^ill 
cut short the list, for, indeed, many have no names. 
Some of these are from four to six miles in width, 
and yet they look like mere pools at thi^ distance, 
and in the midst of such a mass of green. 

I have gazed on many mountain prospects in this 
and the old world, but this and the view from 
Tahawus have awakened an entirely new class of 
emotions. They are American scenes, constituting 
one of the distinctive features of our country, where 
nature seems to have formed everything on such 
a large model, merely because she had so much 
room to work in. I wanted to set fire to the trees on 
the summit of the mountain, so as to present an un- 
obstructed view, but the foliage was too green to 
burn. A deep moss bed covered the whole top, on 
which we reclined as on the softest couch. You will 
get some conception of the wildness of the country, 
when I tell you that it took us ne^arly five hours to 
find this mountain after we first came in sigJtt of it, 



A STARVED COMPANY. 147 

though at the time not more than two miles distant, 
in a straight line, from its base. "We rowed six miles 
and landed with its blue top in clear view — then 
took the direction with our pocket compasses, and 
started off. One who had been to the summit before 
acted as guide, but after circling round one or two 
swamps, and falling unconsciously out of our way, by 
following ridges that seemed to go in the direction we 
wished, we found ourselves wholly at loss. Hills and 
swamps, and a dense forest on every side, completely 
obstructed our view, and we stumbled on hour after 
hour, and ascended two mountains, before we could 
finally get another glimpse of the one we were after. 
We breakfasted about six in the morning, and had left 
our fishing-tackle on the shore, where we expected to 
be again by noon, and take some trout for dinner — 
but it was half-past three when we reached the top of 
this mountain, making nine hours of the most des- 
perate toil ; with nothing to eat, and, what was worse, 
with no prospect of getting anything till we should 
again reach our boats. The doctor was in perfect 
despair, and declared he could not return without 
food. As a last resort, he took from his pocket a 
piece of venison he had brought along for trout bait, 



148 THE ADIRONDACK. 

(a Frenchman could not have wished it older ^) and 
devoured it. I begged the half of a cigar of one of the 
company, (I offered him five dollars for the w^hole of 
it,) to stimulate my exhausted system, and we began 
our descent. We again lost our course and wandered 
about till, wearied out, and hungry, we sat down in a 
bed of wild " sheep sorrel," and plucked the green 
leaves and ate them. An owl fluttered on a branch 
over head, and I drew up my rifle and fired, but miss- 
ed him. I verily believe, if I had killed him I should 
have eaten him on the spot. The doctor declared 
he would not stir — he would rather die than go any 
further. We cheered him up with the remembrance of 
his venison^ at which he made sundry wry faces, not 
to be mistaken, and which drew peals of laughter 
from us, weary and faint as we v/ere. The doctor 
would then stagger on, but it was really pitiful to 
look back and see him stop, put his shoulder to a tree, 
and sink his head against the trunk, then slide down 
in utter exhaustion, on the green moss at the root. 

At length the rifle shot of the clergyman, who had 
gone on while we tarried for the doctor, announced 
that he had at last found the lake. This gave new 
life to our spirits, and we scrambled joyously for- 



149 

ward. Those slender boats never looked so beautiful 
to me before, as they then did, resting quietly on the 
beach. 

It was now nearly dark, and the nearest hut was 
four miles off. Three of us sat down in one boat 
and looked despairingly on each other, as much as to 
say, "Who can row these four miles?" Invalid 
as I was, I seemed to have the most strength left, 
and so took the oars and rowed two miles and a 
half, though every stroke seemed to tear out my very 
stomach — ribs and all. We at length moored our 
skiff at the base of a hill, and began the ascent to a 
clearing. With both hands on the muzzle of my rifle, 
which I used as a pole to push myself along with, I 
dragged one foot after another, till I at length stopped, 
and bowing my head on my gun, declared I was fairly 
done up, and could go no farther. Just then there 
came a flash of lightning that set the dark forest in a 
blaze, followed by a peal of thunder that made the 
shores and mountains tremble, as it rolled like the 
report of a hundred cannon down the lake. I in- 
stinctively straightened up, as the thought flashed 
over me, what sort of a mathematical line the bullet 
of my rifle would just then have made through my 



150 THE ADIRONDACK. 

brain, had the powder but ignited. I immediately 
stepped forward with considerable alertness, though 
not without reflecting on the wonderful power elec- 
tricity and magnetism exerted over the human sys- 
tem, especially under such circumstances. 

I at length reached the hut, with a head burst- 
ing with pain; and, throwing myself on the floor, 
begged most piteously for a morsel of bread. I had 
been fourteen hours without food, and most of the 
time undergoing the severest toil. That night was 
one of pain to me, and as I turned on my rude bed, 
I felt that for once I had '' paid too dear for the 
whistle." 

Yours truly. 



XVII. 



LONG LAKE A FEARFUL NIGHT A GALE IN THE WOODS 

MAN BITTEN BY A RABBIT. 

Long Lake, August. 

My Dear H : 

Yo« must expect now and then a hiatus in my 
journal, for hours of idleness are indulged in here as 
well as in civilized life. To-day, wearied with yes- 
terday's tramp, we may be loitering around the camp, 
cleaning our rifles, and recruiting ourselves for a long 
to-morrow. Sometimes we idle away the entire morn- 
ing, and spend the afternoon in fishing — again take a 
deer in the morning, and after dinner dress him, then 
perhaps, practice rifle-shooting towards evening. At 
another time a rain-storm sets in, which lasts two or 
three days, compelling us to keep close and do no- 
thing. As these are all rather monotonous to me, the 
relation would be so to you — beside, one trout fishing 



152 THE ADIRONDACK. 

and one deer hunt is very much like another ; and 
though the excitement is ever new to him who is 
engaged in them, they have no freshness in the de- 
scription. 

Long Lake is one of the most beautiful sheets of 
water I ever floated over, and its frame-work of moun- 
tains becomes the glorious picture. No artist has 
ever yet visited it ; and alas, as I have no skill with 
the pencil, its beauties, like the "rose in the wdl- 
derness," must, for a Avhile, blush unseen. I never 
saw a more beautiful island than " Round Island," as 
it is called, situated midway of the lake. As you 
look at it from above or below, it appears to stand 
between two promontories, whose green and rounded 
points are striving to reach it as they push boldly. out 
into the water; while, with its abrupt, high banks, 
from which go up the lofty pine trees, it looks like a 
huge green cylinder, sunk there endwise, in the 
waves. I wished I owned that island — it would be 
pleasant to be possessor of so much beauty. 

Mitchell went yesterday to the foot of this lake to 
meet his father and sister, who were on the way to 
visit him. They had started some time before, a 
hundred and fifty miles distant, in a bark canoe, and 



AFTERNOON. 153 

he calculated that, that day or the next, they would 
be at the outlet. He not having returned, I thought 
in the afternoon I would row down and find him. I 
had some thirteen miles to go, and unfortunately, 
neither of the two young men with me could handle 
the oars or steer, so I stripped to the task. Luckily, 
however, there was a strong gale blowing down the 
lake, and I landed on an island and cut a bush, which 
I hung over with pocket handerchiefs to make it hold 
the wind, and then set it upright in the centre of the 
boat as a mainsail. The breeze was strong and steady, 
and worked admirably. Far away to the south- 
west, the golden sky shone in brilliant colors, and 
over its illuminated depths the fragmentary clouds 
went trooping as if joyous with life, while to the 
northwest, towards which our frail craft was driving, 
the heavens were black as midnight, and the retir- 
ing storm-cloud looked dark and fierce — retreating, 
though still unconquered. The sun was hastening to 
the ridge of the sky-seeking mountains, and his de- 
parting beams threw in still deeper contrast the black 
masses that curtained in the eastern heavens. But 
still the waves kept dancing in the light, as if deter- 
mined not to be frowned out of their frolic, and it was 
7* 



154 THE ADIRONDACK. 

with no little pleasure I saw that threatening cloud 
yield to the balmy and swift careering breeze that 
swept the bosom of the lake. 

At length, just as we were glancing away from the 
head of a beautiful island, I saw a boat coming 
towards us, impelled against the wind by the steady 
strokes of a powerful rower. As it shot near, I be- 
held the swarthy and benevolent face of Mitchell. He 
lay on his oars a minute to hear my salutation and 
my proposition, then pointed to a deep bay a mile dis- 
tant, around which stretched a white line of sand ; 
and again bent to his oars. I followed after, for I 
knew there was his camp ; and soon after our boats 
grated on the smooth beach, and we were sitting be- 
side a bark shanty, and discussing our future plans. 
But those few barks, piled against some poles, were 
not enough to cover us, and soon every one was at 
work, peeling spruce trees, or picking hemlock boughs. 
The cloudless sun went proudly, nay, to me, triumph- 
antly to his royal couch amid the mountain summits 
— and as twilight deepened over the wild landscape, 
our camp fire shot its cheerful flame heavenward, and 
we lay scattered around amid the trees in delightful 
indolence. Mitchell had cauorht some trout, and these. 



A FEARFUL NIGHT. 155 

with the contents of our knapsacks, furnished us a 
noble supper. With my back against a stump, I held 
a splendid trout in one hand, while my hunting-knife 
in the other, peeled off his salmon-colored sides in 
most tempting, delicious morsels. 

After supper I asked Mitchell if we could not get a 
deer before going to bed. He said yes, if the wind 
went down so that we could float them. This floating 
deer I will describe in another place, for there was no 
stirring out that night. The wrathful little swells 
came rushing furiously against the unoffending beach, 
the tall tree-tops swayed to and fro, and sighed in 
the blast — our roughly-fanned fire threw its sparks 
in swift eddies heavenward, and all betokened a wild 
and fearful night. '' No boat must leave the beach," 
and so carefully loading our rifles and setting them up 
against the trees, we began to prepare for our night's 
repose. Some with their heads under the bark shan- 
ty, and their feet to the fire — others in the open forest, 
with their heads across a stick of wood — lay stretched 
their full length upon the earth. I lay down for a 
while, but the wind, which had increased at sunset, 
now blew furiously, filling the forest with such an 
uproar that it was with difficulty I could shake off" 



hl6 THE ADIRONDACK. 

the delusion that I was in the midst of the ocean. 
I could not sleep, so rising from my couch of boughs, 
I went out and sat down on the ground, and looked 
and listened. The steady roar of the waves on the 
beach below mingled in with the rush of the blast 
above, the tall trees rocked and swung on every 
side, and flung out their long arms into the night 
— ^their leafy tresses streaming before them — and 
groaned on their ancient foundations with a deep and 
steady sound — ^till my heart was filled with emotions 
at once solemn and fearful. To add to the sublimity 
and terror of the scene, ever and anon came a dull and 
heavy shock, like the report of distant cannon. It was 
made by a tree falling all alone there, in the depths of 
the forest. Oh, what strange emotions those muffled 
echoes awoke within me. Sometimes I thought one 
of these gigantic forms near me, must also fall in the 
struggle, and crush some of our company into the 
earth ; and then again forgetting the danger, my soul 
would bow to the lordly music, till that great pri- 
meval forest seemed one vast harp — its trunks and 
branches the mighty wires, and the strong blast the 
fierce and fearless hand that swept them. Now faint 
and far in the distance I could catch the coming 



AN INCIDENT. 157 

anthem till, swelling fuller and clearer on my excited 
ear, it at length went over me with a sea-like roar, 
then died away in the far solitude. G-od seemed near 
me, there, in the fearful night, and His voice was 
speaking to me. How calm the sleepers around me 
lay in the firelight, reposing as quietly in the wild 
uproar, as if naught but the dews of heaven were 
gently distilling, and yet how helpless they appeared 
in their slumbers ! Grod alone was their keeper, and 
I never felt more deeply the protection of that pa- 
rental hand, than there at midnight. 

The moon at length arose on the darkness, and the 
wind gradually lulled to a gentler motion. I threw 
myself on the ground, and watched the bright orb as 
it slowly mounted the heavens, with feelings I will 
not attempt to describe. 

It was now about one o'clock, and I was endeavor- 
ing to compose myself to slumber, when there occur- 
red one of those ludicrous incidents that makes one's 
romance vanish like mist, and yet derives half of its 
comicality from the time and circumstances in which 
it occurs. As my eyes were resting on the fine pro- 
portions of a young, athletic backwoodsman, who was 
lying near the smouldering brands on the open earth, 



158 THE ADIRONDACK. 

his head resting across a stick of wood for a pillow, 
and his heavy breathing telling of the profoundest 
slumber, I saw a rabbit steal from the bushes and 
cautiously approach him. With his nose close to the 
ground, he smelt around until he came to the sleeper's 
brawny hand outstretched upon the leaves. Some 
fragments of the johnny-cake still clinging to his 
thumb, deceived the rabbit into the belief that the 
whole digit was edible, and he put his teeth into it. 
This wakened the backwoodsman, who, rising to a 
sitting posture, looked wildly around him and then 
examined his thumb. All was quiet there ; and im- 
agining he had, in his dreams, thrashed his hand 
about and struck a splinter, he fell back, and was 
soon fast asleep. After waiting a proper time, the 
rabbit stole forth again, and creeping cautiously up to 
the large greasy hand, made his teeth meet through it. 
This roused the poor fellow with a start, and he 
caught a glimpse of his assailant as, with his long ears 
laid flat on his back, he scampered into the bushes. 

K g looked a moment at the place where he had 

disappeared, and then at his bleeding thumb, mutter- 
ing in the mean while, " There, I've ketched you at it 
— now — vou had better be off." The serious tone in 



MISTAKE OF A RABBIT. 159 

which this was said, finished me, and I went into con- 
vulsions of laughter. The look of innocent wonder — 
the dreadful imprecation, and the surprise and terror 
of the poor rabbit, crouching far away in the bushes, 
combined so much of the " serio-comico," that I 
laughed till I awoke the entire camp, who inquired 
what was the matter. A loud shout followed the ex- 
planation, which gradually died away into silence, as 
one after another dropped to sleep again. I, too, at 
length sunk in slumber, and was just in the midst of 
a sweet dream, when "crack" went a rifle, not ten 
yards from me, sending me to my feet with a start. 
The poor rabbit, however, was the only sufferer. 

B n, after I had thus unceremoniously roused the 

camp, lit his pipe, and sitting down behind a stump, 
w^atched for the rabbit. Seeing him steal cautiously 
forth, he had put a bullet through him, and thus 
ended the innocent creature's existence. 

At length the welcome morning appeared, and 
launcliing our boats, we started for Cold River to take 
some trout. 

Yours truly. 



XVIII, 



TROUTING A DUCK PROTECTING HER YOUNG BY STRATA- 
GEM SABBATH IN THE FOREST. 

Long Lake, Aug 

Dear H : . 

I believe I broke off my last letter to go a-fishing — 
well the Indian and myself went ahead, hoping to 
surprise some deer feeding in the marshes, but were 
disappointed. Reaching the foot of the lake, we shot 
noiselessly down the Raquette River, till we came to 
a huge rock that rose out of the bed of the stream, 
when we turned off and began to ascend Cold River. 
When we reached it, the surface was covered with 
foam bubbles, made by the constant springing of the 
trout after flies. They had absolutely churned it up, 
and for awhile our hooks brought them to the surface 
fast — but we were too late — the sun soon rising over 
the forest, shed such a flood of light on the water, and 



A duck's stratagem. \(^i 

indeed through it, to the very bottom, that scarcely a 
fish could be coaxed from his hiding-place. Onr 
boats and ourselves also threw strong shadows, suffi- 
cient to frighten less wary fish than trout. We how- 
ever took enough for breakfast, and started for home. 
By the way, is it not a little singular that fish should 
eat their own flesh; the/r5^ one we caught served as 
bait for the others. 

As we were returning, Mitchell left the main 
stream and entered a narrow and shallow channel, 
that by making a circuitous route, reached the lake 
close beside the outlet. Passing silently along, we 
roused up a brood of ducks among the reeds. The 
mother first took the alarm, and seeing at a glance 
that she could not escape with her young, left them 
and fluttered out, directly ahead of our boat. She 
then began to make a terrible ado, striking her wings 
on the water, and screaming, and darting backwards 
and forwards, as if dreadfully wounded and could be 
easily picked up. I instinctively raised my rifle to 
my shoulder : then thinking the shot might frighten 
the deer we were after, I turned to Mitchell and in- 
quired if I should fire. " I guess I wouldn't," he 
replied ; ''she has young ones." My gun dropped in 



I 



162 THE ADIRONDACK. 

a moment. I stood rebuked, not only by my own 
feelings, but by the Indian with me. I was shocked 
that this hunter who had lived so many years on the 
spoils of the forest, should teach me tenderness of 
feeling. That mother's voice found an echo in his 
heart, and he would not harm one feather of her 
plumage ; nor could the bribe be named that would 
then have induced me to strike the anxious affec- 
tionate creature. As I saw her thus sacrificing her- 
self to save her young, provoking the death-shot in 
order to draw attention from them, I wondered how I 
could for a single moment have wished to destroy her. 
I leaned over the boat and watched her movements for 
nearly half a mile. She would keep just ahead of us, 
sailing backwards and forwards, now striking her 
wings on the water, as if struggling with all her 
strength to fly, yet unable to rise ; and now screaming 
out as if distressed to death at her perilous position ; 
yet cunningly moving off in the meantime, so as to 
allure us after, in order to increase the distance be- 
tween us and her offspring. "While we were near the 
nest, she swam almost under our bow ; but as we 
continued to advance she grew more timorous, as if 
beginning to think a little more of herself. I could 



NEW MODE OF EATING TROUT. 



163 



not blame her for this, for she had hitherto kept 
within reach of certain death if I had chosen to fire. 
But it was curious to observe in what exact proportion 
her care for herself increased as the danger to her off- 
spring lessened. She would rise and fly some dis- 
tance, then alight in the water, and await our 
approach. If she sailed out of sight a moment, she 
would wheel and look back, and even swim back, till 
she saw us following after, when she would move off 
again. The foolish thing really believed she was out- 
witting us, and, I have no doubt, had many self-com- 
placent reflections on the ease with which ducks could 
humbug human beings. After we had proceeded in 
this way about half a mile, she rose into the air, and 
striking the Raquette River, sped back by a circular 
sweep to her young. As her form disappeared round 
a bend of the stream, I could not help murmuring, 
'' Heaven speed thee, anxious mother." Ah, what a 
chattering there was amid the reeds when her shadow 
darkened over the hiding-place, and she folded her 
wings amid her offspring, and listened with matronly 
dignity to the story each one had to tell ? 

All this, however, was speedily forgotten as we 
emerged on the lake, whose bosom was swept by a 



164 THE ADIRONDACK. 

strong wind, against which we were compelled to 
force our tiny skiffs as we pulled for the camp. It 
was now nine o'clock, and I never waited with so 
much impatience for a meal as I did for the johnny- 
cake that was slowly roasting amid the ashes. We 
had but one pan, and until the cake was done we 
could not cook our trout — and so stretched under the 
shadow of a huge stump, with my chip-plate in my 
hand, I lay and watched the crackling flames with all 
the philosophy I could muster. 

Mitchell, however, acted on philosophy of another 
description, and while we were waiting for the pan, 
dressed a pound trout, and cutting a long limber stick, 
thrust one end of it through the fish lengthwise, and 
sticking the other end in the ground, placed it at a 
proper distance and angle over the fire. He then lay 
down near it to superintend the cooking, which after 
sundry changes and turns was completed. This 
I had seen him do before, but now came the per- 
fection of laziness. Sitting up, he swung the stick 
arovmd towards him, so that as he fell back on his 
elbow, the trout hung suspended over his head ; and 
thus while it bobbed up and down, he quietly peeled 
off the delicious morsels and ate them. That grave, 



AN INDIAN S THOUGHTFULNESS. 165 

swarthy Indian stretched on the leaves, with the trout 
nodding above him, as he slowly stripped away 
the flesh, furnished a picture I should like to have 
taken. 

After breakfast we had no dishes or forks to clean, 
but throwing them both away, wiped our knives on a 
chip, and in a moment were ready for a start. It was 
Saturday, and the heavens which had been so clear 
the night before, now began to gather blackness — 
the burdened wind moaned through the forest, or went 
sobbing over the lake that was every moment fretting 
its3lf into greater excitement, and everything be- 
tokened a gloomy and tempestuous day. We were 
fourteen miles from a human habitation ; and though I 
expected that day to have gone thirty miles farther 
into the forest and spent the Sabbath, the storm that 
was approaching made the shelter of a log cabin seem 
too inviting, and I changed my mind. But to row 
fourteen miles against a head w4nd and sea was no 
child's play, and for one I resolved not to do it. So, 
making a bargain with Mitchell, the Indian, I wrap- 
ped my oil-skin cape about me, and laying my rifle 
across my lap, ensconced myself in the stern of the 
boat, and made up my mind to a drencher. The- 



166 THE ADIRONDACK. 

black clouds came rushing over the huge mount ains^ 
and the rain soon began to fall in torrents. Now hug- 
ging the shore to escape the blast, and now sailing 
under the lee of an island — once compelled to land till 
the hurricane had passed^ — we crawled along until at 
length, late in the afternoon, we found ourselves com- 
fortably housed. 

The log hut of Mitchell, in which I spent the Sab- 
bath, was in the centre of two or three acres of 
cleared land ; all the rest was forest. During the day, 
I was struck with the sense of propriety, and delicacy 
of feeling shown by him. Sunday must have been a 
weary day to him, yet he engaged in no sports, per- 
formed no work, that I saw, inappropriate to it. In 
the afternoon, however, he took down his violin, and I 
expected such music as would distress one to hear 
on the Sabbath. But he refrained from all those 
tunes I knew he preferred, and played only sacred 
hymns, most of them Methodist ones. I could not 
imagine where he had learned them ; but this silent 
respect for my feelings made me love him at once, and 
I conceived a respect for him I shall never lose. 

The day went out in storms, and as I lay down that 
night on my rough couch, I could hardly believe I 



FALSE NOTIONS. 



167 



was in the same State of which New York was the 
emporium, whose myriad spires pierced the heavens. 

I have been thus particular, because in no other 
way can you get a correct idea of the daily life one is 
compelled to lead who would penetrate these wilds. 
It is nonsense to talk of dignity, and the impropriety 
of a man's carrying a rifle and fishing-tackle, and 
spending his time in shooting deer and catching trout. 
Such folly is becoming to him only, who sits on the 
piazza of a hotel at Saratoga Springs, at the expense 
of twelve dollars a week for his health. I love nature 
and all things as God has made them. I love the 
freedom of the wilderness and the absence of conven- 
tional forms there. I love the long stretch through 
the forest on foot, and the thrilling, glorious prospect 
from some hoary mountain top. I love it, and I know 
it is better for me than the thronged city, aye, better 
for soul and body both. How is it that even good men 
have come to think so little of nature, as if to love her 
and seek her haunts and companionship were a waste 
of time ? I have been astonished at the remarks 
sometimes made to me on my long jaunts in the 
woods, as if it were almost wicked to cast off the 



168 THE ADIRONDACK. 

gravity of society, and wander like a child amid the 
beauty which G-od has spread out with such a lavish 
hand over the earth. Why, I should as soon think of 
feeling reproved for gazing on the midnight heavens, 
gorgeous with stars, and fearful with its mysterious 
floating worlds. I believe that every man degenerates 
without frequent communion with nature. It is one 
of the open books of Grod, and more replete with 
instructions than anything ever penned by man. A 
single tree standing alone, and waving all day long its 
green crown in the summer wind, is to me fuller of 
meaning and instruction than the crowded mart or 
gorgeously built town. 



XIX. 

LONG LAKE COLONY A LOON FORKED LAKE. 

Forked Lake, August. 



Dear H- 



Taking Mitchell along with me, we embarked on 
Monday in his birch bark canoe for Forked and Ra- 
quette Lakes. Paddling leisurely up Long Lake, I 
was struck with the desolate appearance of the settle- 
ment. Scarcely an improvement has been made since 
I was last here, while some clearings are left to go 
back to their original wildness. Disappointed pur- 
chasers, lured in by extravagant statements, have 
given up in despondency and left — the best people 
are all going away, and in a short time there will be 
nobody left but hunters. This wilderness will be 
encroached upon in time, though it will require years 
to give us so crowded a population as to force settle- 
ments into this desolate interior of the State. 
8 



170 THE ADIRONDACK. 

But our light canoes soon left the last clearing ; and 
curving round the shore, we shot into Raquette 
River, and entered the bosom of the forest. As we 
left the lake, I saw a northern diver some distance up 
the inlet, evidently anxious to get out once more into 
open space. These birds (about the size of a goose,) 
you know, cannot rise from the water except by a 
long effort, and against a strong damp wind ; and de- 
pend for safety entirely on diving, and swimming. 
At the approach of danger, they go under like a duck, 
and when you next see them, they are perhaps sixty 
rods distant, and beyond the reach of your bullet. If 
cornered in a small pond, they will sit and watch 
your motions with a keenness and certainty that is 
wonderful, and dodge the flash of a percussion-lock 
gun all day long. The moment they see the blaze 
from the muzzle they dive, and the bullet, if well 
aimed, will strike exactly where they sat. I have 
shot at them again and again, with a dead rest, 
and those watching, would see the ball each time, 
strike in the hollow made by the wake of the 
water above the creature's back. There is no killing 
them except by firing at them when they are not ex- 
pecting it, and then their head and neck are the only 



SHOT AT A LOON. 17 1 

vulnerable points. They sit so deep in the water, 
and the quills on their backs are so hard and com- 
pact that a ball seems to make no impression on 
them. At least, I have never seen one killed by be- 
ing shot through the body. Such are the means of 
self-preservation possessed by this curious bird, whose 
wild, shrill, and lonely cry, on the lake at midnight, 
is one of the most melancholy sounds I ever heard 
in the forest. 

This diver, of which I was just now speaking, I 
wished very much to kill, in order to carry his skin 
to New York with me ; and so, after firing at him 
in vain, I asked Mitchell if we could not both of us 
tos^ether manas^e to take him. He told me to land 
him where the channel was narrow that entered Long 
Lake, and paddle along towards where the fellow was 
sitting, and drive him out. As I approached the bird, 
he dived. Knowing that he would make straight for 
the lake, I watched the whole line of his progress 
with the utmost care : but though my range took in 
nearly a third of a mile, I never saw him again. 
After a while I heard the crack of a rifle around the 
bend of the shore ; and hastening thither, I found Mit- 
chell loading his gun. He said the rascal just raised 



172 THE ADIRONDACK. 

his head above water for a single second, opposite 
where he stood, and he of course missed him. The 
frightened bird did not appear again till it rose far 
out in the lake. 

I mention this circumstance merely to show the 
habits of this, to me, most singular bird of our north- 
ern waters. I forgot to say that although it cannot 
rise from the water except with great difficulty, and 
never attempts it to escape danger, neither can it 
walk on the shore. Diving is about the only gift it 
possesses, which it uses, I must say, with great 
ability and success. 

Paddling up Raquette river, we at length came to 
Buttermilk Falls, around which we were compelled 
to carry our canoes. So in another place we were 
compelled to carry them two miles, around rapids, 
through the woods. Nothing can be more comical 
than to stand and see a party thus passing through 
the forest. First a yoke is placed across the guide's 
neck, on which the boat is balanced bottom side up, 
covering the poor fellow down to the shoulders, and 
sticking out fore and aft over the biped below in such 
a way as to make him appear half human, hall-super- 
natural, or, at least, entiYely un-natural. But it was 



BOAT CARRYING. 173 

no joke to me to carry my part of the freight. Two 
rifles, one overcoat, one tea-pot, one lantern, one 
basin, and a piece of pork, were my portion. Some- 
times I had a change — namely, two oars and a pad- 
dle, balanced by a tin pail in place of a rifle. Thus 
equipped, I would press on for a while, and then stop 
to see the procession-.-each poor fellow staggering 
under the weight he bore, while in the long intervals 
appeared the two inverted boats, walking through the 
woods on two human legs in the most surprising 
manner imaginable. Though tired and fagged out, I 
could not refrain from frequent outbursts of laughter, 
that made the forest ring again. But there was no 
other way of getting along, and each one had to 
become a beast of burden. 

It was a relief to launch again, and when at last 
we struck the river just after it leaves Forked Lake, 
and gazed on the beautiful sheet of water- that was 
rolling and sparkling in the sunlight ahead, an invol- 
untary shout burst from the- party. A flock of wild 
ducks, scared at the sound, made the water foam as 
they rose at our feet and sped away. Stemming the 
rapid stream with our light prows, we were soon afloat 
on the bosom of the lake. The wind was blowing 



174 THE ADIRONDACK. 

directly in our teeth, making the miniature waves 
leap and dance around us as if welcoming us to their 
home — a white gull rose from a rock at our side — a 
fish hawk screamed around her huge nest on a lofty 
pine-tree on the shore, as she wheeled and circled 
ahove her offspring — a raven croaked overhead — ^the 
cry of loons arose in the distance — and all was wild 
yet beautifal. The sun was stooping to the west- 
ern mountains, whose sea of summits were calmly 
sleeping against the golden heavens : the cool breeze 
stirred a world of foliage on our right — green islands, 
beautiful as Elysian fields, rose out of the water as 
we advanced ; the sparkling waves rolled as merrily 
under as bright a sky as ever bent over the earth, and 
for a moment I seemed to have been transported into 
a new world. I never was more struck by a scene in 
my life : its utter wildness, spread out there where 
the axe of civilization has never struck a blow — the 
evening — ^the sunset — the deep purple of the moun- 
tains — ^the silence and solitude of the shores, and the 
cry of birds in the distance, combined to render it one 
of enchantment to me. My feelings were more ex- 
cited, perhaps, by the consciousness that we were 
without any definite object before us — no place of 



FORKED LAKE. 175 

rest, but sailing along looking out for some good point 
of land on which to pitch our camp. 

Mitchell made no replies to our inquiries, but kept 
paddling along among the lily pads imtil he reached 
a point near the Raquette river and mooring our 
boats to the shore, began to prepare for the night. 

Yours truly. 



XX. 



SHOOTING A DEER MODERN SENTIMENTALISTS THE IN^ 

FLUENCE OF NATURE. 

Forked Lake, Aug. 

After we had pitched (not our tent, but) our 
shanty, we began to cast about for supper. I told 
Mitchell I could not think of eating a piece of salt 
pork, and we must get some trout. So rigging our 
lines upon poles we cut on the shores of the lake, and 
taking our rifles with us, we jumped into our bark 
canoe, and pushed for some rapids in the Raquette 
River, where it entered Forked Lake. As we were 
paddling carefully along the edge of a marsh that put 
out from the main land, Mitchell, who was at the 
stern, suddenly exclaimed, '' Hist ! — I see the head of 
deer coming down to feed." I sometimes thought he 
could smell a deer, for he would often say he saw one 



SHOOTING A DEER. 177 

before both his ears had fairly emerged from the 
bushes. " Shoot him," he said to me. " I can't," I 
replied; "I am too tired: shoot him yourself." So 
stooping my head to let the bullet pass over me, I 
watched him as he took aim ; and it was a sight 
worth seeing. The careless, indolent manner so 
natural to him had disappeared as if by magic, and he 
stood up in the stern of the boat as straight as his own 
rifle, while his dark eye glanced like an eagle's. 
Every nerve in him seemed to have been suddenly 
touched by an electric spark — and as he now stooped to 
elude the watchfulness of the deer, and now again 
stood erect, with his rifle raised to his shoulder, he 
was one of the most picturesque objects I ever saw. 
The timorous doe was feeding on the marsh, and ever 
and anon lifted her head as if she scented danger in 
the air. Then Mitchell would drop like a flash, and 
gently rise again as the deer returned to her feed. She 
was about twenty rods off", and now stood fairly ex- 
posed amid the grass. It was a long shot for arm's 
length, and a tottlish boat to stand in, but he resolved 
to try it. Slowly bringing his rifle to his face, he 
stood for a moment as motionless as a pillar of marble, 
while his gun seemed suddenly to have frozen in its 



178 THE ADIRONDACK. 

place, so still and steady did it lie in his bronze hand. 
A flash — a quick sharp report, and the noble deer 
bounded several feet into the air, then wheeled and 
sprang into the forest. He had shot directly over my 
head, and the mad bound of the animal told too w^ell 
that the unerring bullet had struck near the life. 
Rowing hastily to the spot, we could find no traces 
of blood, but Mitchell, with his eye bent on the 
ground, paced backward and forward without saying 
a word. At length he stopped and peering down 
amid the long grass, said, '' Here is blood." How he 
discovered it is a perfect mystery to me, for the grass 
was a foot long and very thick, while the drop 
which had fallen on the roots of a single blade, I 
never should have noticed, and if I had, have con- 
sidered it a mere discoloration of the leaf, fac 
similies of which occurred at every step. The keen 
hawk eye of the Indian hunter, however, could not be 
deceived, and he simply remarked, "She is hit deep, 
or she would have bled more," and struck on the 
trail. But this baffled even, for the marsh was 
covered with deer tracks, while the bushes into which 
the wounded one had sprung were a perfect matting 
of laurels and low shrubs. There was no more blood 



A DEER SHOT. 179 

to be found, and we were completely at fault in our 
search. 

At length, tired and disappointed, I returned to the 
boat ; and stood waiting the return of Mitchell, when 
the sharp crack of his rifle again rang through the 
forest, followed soon after by a shrill whistle. I 
knew then that a deer had fallen, and hastened to the 
spot. There lay the beautiful creature stretched on 
the moss, with the life-blood welling from her throat, 
and over the body, watching, stood Mitchell, leaning 
on his rifle. Unable to find the trail, he had made a 
shrewd guess as to the course the animal had taken, 
and making a circuit, finally came upon her, lain 
down to die. At his approach she sprang to her feet, 
ran a few rods, fell again exhausted, when his deadly 
aim planted a bullet directly back of her ear, and her 
career was ended. 

Satisfied with our game, we gave up the fishing, 
and dragging the body to the boat, put back to our 
camp. The rest of our company stood on the shore 
waiting our return, for they had heard the shots, and 
were expecting the spoils. Some, no doubt, will think 
this very cruel, and congratulate themselves on their 
kinder natures. I have seen such people, and lieard 



180 THE ADIRONDACK. 

them expend whole sentences of sentuTientality upon 
the hard-heartedness that could take the life of so 
innocent a creature, who very coolly wrung the 
necks of chickens every night for their breakfast, and 
devoured with great gusto the shoulder of a lamb for 
dinner. They slay without remorse the most harm- 
less, trusting creatures that haunt their meadows, or 
sport upon their lawns and take food from their hands, 
and yet are shocked at the idea of killing a deer or 
shooting a wild pigeon. They kill Grod's creatures, 
not from necessity, but to gratify their palates and 
minister to their luxurious tastes. But if any one 
supposes we shot this noble doe for sport, he must 
have a very vague idea of the toils we had endured 
that day, or of our keen appetites. A man of great 
sentimentality might eat boiled eggs and toast with 
his coffee for breakfast, rather than sanction the death 
of an animal by partaking of flesh. I say he might 
do it, though I have never seen an instance of such 
great self-denial ; but I doubt whether, if he were a 
day's journey from a human habitation, hungry and 
tired, with the prospect of nothing but a piece of salt 
pork, toasted on the end of a stick for supper and 
breakfast, he would hesitate to eat a venison steak. 



FALSE SENTIMENTALITY. 181 

But I like to have forgot — the pork, too, was the flesh 
of an animal, and it would be difficult to convince a 
hog that he had not as good a right to life as a deer. 
At all events, we enjoyed the venison, though perhaps 
the sentimentalist might say we were punished in the 
end^ for it made us all outrageously sick. We either 
cooked it too soon, (for in twenty minutes from the 
tirjie the deer fell, a part of her was roasting;) or we 
ate it too rare, (for we were too hungry to wait till it 
was perfectly done ;) or we ate too much, (for we were 
hungry as famished wolves ;) or probably did all three 
things together, which quite upset me. 

But after the things (i. e. the chips) were cleared 
away, I stretched myself on the ground under a tree 
whose dark trunk shone in the light of the cheerful 
fire, and began to muse on the day that had past. 
How is it that a scene of quiet beauty makes so much 
deeper an impression than a startling one? The 
glorious sunset I had witnessed on that sweet lake — 
the curving and forest-mantled shores — ^the gTcen 
islands^the mellow mountains, all combined to make 
a scene of surpassing loveliness : and now as I lay and 
watched the stars coming out one after another, and 
twinkling down on me through the tree-tops, all that 



182 THE ADIRONDACK. 

beauty came back on me with strange power. The 
gloomy gorge and savage precipice, or the sudden 
storm, seem to excite the surface only of one's feelings, 
while the sweet vale, with its cottages and herds and 
evening bells, blends itself in with our very thoughts 
and emotions, forming a part of our after existence. 
Such a scene sinks away into the heart like a gentle 
rain into the earth, while a rougher, nay, sublimer 
one, comes and goes like a sudden shower. I do not 
know how it is that the gentler influence should be 
the deeper and more lasting, but so it is. The still 
small voice of nature is more impressive than her 
loudest thunder. Of all the scenery in the Alps, and 
there is no grander on the earth, nothing is so 
plainly daguerreotyped on my heart as two or three 
lovely valleys I saw. Those heaven-piercing sum- 
mits, and precipices of ice, and terrific gorges, and 
fearful passes, are like grand but indistinct visions 
on my memory, while those vales, with their carpets 
of greensward, and murmuring rivulets, and perfect 
repose, have become a part of my life. In moments 
of high excitement or turbulent grief they rise before 
me with their gentle aspect and quiet beauty, hushing 



POWER OF QUIET SCENERY. 183 

the storm into repose, and subduing the spirit like a 
sensible presence. 

But Mitchell has arisen from his couch of leaves, 
where he has been reclining silent and thoughtful as 
his race, and is looking up to the sky and out upon 
the lake, and I know something is afoot. 

Yours truly. 



XXL 



FLOATING DEER A NIGHT EXCURSION MORNING IN THE 

WOODS. 

Forked Lake, Aug. 
Dear H : 

As I stated in my last, Mitchell looked up to the 
sky, and out upon the lake a moment, and then, in 
that quiet way so characteristic of his race, said, " If 
you want to go after a deer it is time we started." It 
took but five minutes to load my rifle, put on my 
overcoat, and announce myself ready. Lifting our 
bark canoe softly from the rocks, we launched it on 
the still water, and stepping carefully in, pushed off. 
Previously, however, Mitchell requested me to try 
one of my matches, to see if the damp had affected 
them. 

You know that deer-floating amid backwoodsmen 
is very different from deer-stalking in t^cotland. In 



FLOATING DEER. 185 

the warm, summer months, the deer come down 
from the mountains at night to feed on the marshes 
that line the shores of the lakes and rivers.* Wliile 
they are thus feeding, if you pass along in a dark, 
still night, without making a noise, you can hear 
them, as they step about in the edge of the water, or 
snort as they scent approaching danger. The moment 
you become aware of the proximity of one, strike a 
light and fix it firmly in the bow of your boat, or in a 
lantern on your head, and advance cautiously. The 
deer, attracted by the flame, stops and gazes intently 
upon it. If he hears no sound he will not stir till you 
are close to him. At first you catch only the sight of 
his two eyes, burning like fire-balls in the gloom, but 
as you approach nearer, the light is thrown on his red 
flanks, and he stands revealed in all his beautiful pro- 
portions before you. The candle serves to distinguish 
the animal, and, at the same time, give you a clear 
view of the sights along your gun-barrel, and he must 
be a poor shot who misses at five rods' distance. 

* Sportsmen may wonder at our killing deer in midsummer^ but 
I would say that we never shot a sucking doe. Bucks never are 
better than in July, for the food is then so abundant they are 
extremely fat. We killed only one doe in all, and that was a 
yearling. 



186 THE ADIRONDACK. 

This night, the only good feeding spot for deer had 
been so trampled over by us, before dark, that they 
would not come out upon it, and we floated on for a 
a long time without hearing anything. I never be- 
fore saw such an exhibition of the stealthy move- 
ments of an Indian. The lake was as still and 
smooth as a polished mirror, and our frail canoe 
floated over it as if impelled by an invisible hand. I 
knelt at the bow, with my rifle before me, while Mit- 
chell sat in the stern as fixed as a statue, yet urging 
the boat on by some strange movement of the paddle, 
which I tried in vain to comprehend. He did not 
even make a ripple on the water, and I could tell we 
were moving only by marking the shadow of trees we 
crossed, or the stars we passed over. Though strain- 
ing every nerve to catch a sound, I never once heard 
the stroke of his paddle. It was the most mysterious 
ride I ever took. "We entered the mouth of a river, 
whose shores were black with the sombre fir trees, 
while ever and anon would come more clearly on the 
ear the roar of a distant waterfall. It was so dark I 
could make out nothing distinctly on shore, and the 
island-like tufts that here and there rose from the 
water — the little bays and rocky points we passed, 



MYSTERIOUS RIDE. 187 

assumed the most grotesque shapes to my fancy, till I 
had all the feelings of one suddenly transported to 
a fairy land. Now the silent boat would cross the 
shadow of a lofty pine tree, that lay dark and calm 
in the water below, and now sail over a bright 
constellation that sparkled in our path, while the 
scream of a far-off loon came ringing like a spirit's 
cry through the gloom. Oh, how bright lay the sky, 
with its sapphire floor beneath us, and how black was 
the fringe of shadow that encroached on its beauty, 
and yet added to it by contrast. The silent night 
around me — the strangeness of the place, and the far 
removal from human habitations, were enough in 
themselves ; but the dim, impalpable objects on shore, 
just distinct enough to confuse the senses, added ten- 
fold mystery to the scene. I seemed moving through 
a boundless world of shadows, with nothing clear and 
natural, but the bright constellations below me. 

Thus we continued on for a mile, without a whisper 
or sign having passed between us. At length the ca- 
noe entered what seemed at first a deep bay, but soon 
changed to the mouth of a gloomy cavern. I leaned 
forward, striving in vain to make out the misshapen 
objects before me ; but the more I looked, the more 



188 THE ADIRONiDACK. 

confused I gi-ew ; while to add to my bewilderment, 
suddenly the dim outlines I was struggling to make 
out, began to vanish as if melting away in the dark- 
ness. At first, I thought the whole had been a struc- 
ture of mist, and was dissolving in my sight, but 
casting my eyes beneath me, I saw we were receding 
over the stars. Then I understood it all. Mitchell, 
without making a sound, had drawn the boat slowly 
backwards, causing the objects before me to fade thus 
strangely from my sight. He knew the ground per- 
fectly well, and could enter every bay and inlet as 
accurately as in broad daylight. 

Pursuing our way up the channel, I was at length 
startled by a low "hist!" The next moment I 
caught the tread of a deer on shore, when the light 
canoe shot along the surface till I could hear the 
low ripple of the water around the bow. " Light 
up !" said Mitchell in a whisper. As quietly as possi- 
ble, I kindled a match, and lighting a candle, put it in 
a lantern made to fit the head like a hat, and clapping 
it in the place of my cap, cocked my rifle and leaned 
forward. The bright flame flared out upon the sur- 
rounding gloom, and all was hush as death. But as 
we advanced towards where the deer was standing, 



THE QUARRY ESCAPED. 189 

the boat suddenly struck the dry limbs of ti spruce 
tree that had fallen in the water. Snap, snap, went 
the brittle twigs — one of them piercing our bark 
canoe. We backed out of the dilemma as quick as 
possible, but the sound had alarmed the deer, and I 
could hear his long bounds as he cleared the bank, 
and made off into the forest. 

After cruising about a little while longer, we put 
back, and crossed the lake to a deep bay on the 
farther side. But the moon now began to show her 
disc over the fir trees, and our last remaining chance 
was. to find a deer in the bay before the silver orb 
should -climb the lofty pines that folded it in. But 
in this too we were disappointed, and the unclouded 
light now flooding lake and forest, we turned wearily 
towards our camp fire that was blazing cheerfully 
amid the trees on the farther shore. Just then a 
merry laugh came floating over the water from our 
companions there, breaking the silence which had en- 
chained us, and for the first time we spoke. My 
limbs were almost paralyzed from having been kept so 
long in one position, and I was sick and weary. Still 
I would not have missed that mysterious boat-ride 
and the strange sensations it had awakened, to have 



190 THE ADIRONDACK. 

been saved from thrice the inconvenience it had occa- 
sioned me. It was one of those new things in this 
stereotyped life of ours, imparting new experiences, 
and giving one as it were a deeper insight into his own 
soul. 

At length we stretched ourselves upon the boughs, 
and were soon fast asleep. I awoke, however, about 
midnight, and found our fire reduced to a few em- 
bers, while the rain was coming down as if that were 
its sole business for the night. It is gloomy in the 
woods without a fire ; and I never seem so com- 
panionless as when in the still midnight I awake and 
find nothing but the dark forest about me, cheered by 
no light. A bright, crackling flame seems like a 
living thing, keeping awake on purpose to watch over 
you. 

Leaving my companions, whose heavy breathings 
told how profound were their slumbers, I sallied out 
in search of fuel. But there was nothing but green 
fir trees, which would not burn, to be found ; and after 
striking my axe into several, and getting my lower 
extremities thoroughly wet, I returned, and lay down 
again and slept till morning. With the first dawn I 
was up, and taking the Indian's canoe, pushed off in 



OMENS OF A STORM. 191 

search of a deer. The heavy fog lay in masses upon 
the water, and the damp morning was still and quiet 
as the night that had passed. I floated about till the 
sun rose over the mountains, turning that lake into a 
sheet of gold, and sending the mist in spiral wreaths 
skyward, and then slowly paddled my way back to our 
camp. As I was thus floating tranquilly along over 
the water, I heard far up the lake, where it lost itself 
in the mountains, two distinct and heavy reports like 
the discharge of fire-arms. Wlio could be in that 
solitude besides ourselves ? was the first enquiry. I 
mentioned the circumstance when I reached the 
camp, and found that my companions, who had been 
busy in preparing breakfast, had also been startled by 
the sound. Mitchell, just then returned from an expe- 
dition after a fish-hawk, which he brought back with 
him, hearing oyr conjectures, very quietly remarked, 
they were not rifle shots. His quick ear never de- 
ceived him. "What, then, were they?" I enquired. 
'' Trees," he replied. '' But," said I, '' there is not 
a breath of air this morning, while it blew very hard 
yesterday afternoon." " They always fall," he re- 
plied, " before a storm — it will storm to-morrow." 
There was something sad in thinlving of those two 



192 THE ADIRONDACK. 

trees thus falling all alone on a still and beautiful 
morning, foretelling a coming tempest. Sombre 
omens these, and mysterious, as becomes the un- 
trodden forest. 

Mitchell had shot an immense fish-hawk, breaking 
only the tip of his wing, so as to prevent him from 
flying. He brought him and set him down before the 
fire, when the fearless bird drew himself proudly up 
and steadily faced us down without attempting to run 
away. His savage eye betokened no fear, and when 
any one of us approached him, his leg would be lifted 
and his talons expanded ready to strike. I was never 
so struck with the boldness of a bird in my life. At 
length Mitchell took him and placed him on a rock 
by the edge of . the lake, when, for a moment, he 
forgot his wound, and spreading his broad wings, 
leaped from his resting place. But the broken pinion 
refused to carry him heavenward, and he fell heavily 
into the water. I saw Mitchell bring his rifle to his 
shoulder, and the next moment a bullet crushed 
through the head of the poor creature, and its suffer- 
ings were over. 

Such are the incidents of a life in the woods, and 
thus do the days and nights pass— not without mean- 



LANGUAGE OF NATURE. 193 

ing or instruction. A man cannot move or look 
without thinking of God, for all that meets his eye is 
just as it left his mighty hand. The old forest as it 
nods to the passing wind speaks of him — ^the still 
mountain points towards his dwelling-place, and the 
calm lake reflects his sky of stars and sunshine. The 
glorious sunset and the blushing dawn — ^the gorgeous 
midnight and the noon-day splendor, mean more in 
these solitudes than in the crowded city. Indeed, 
they look different — they are different. 

Yours truly, 

9 



XXII. 

FOREST MUSIC. 

The Woods, August. 
Dear H : 

How often we speak of the solitude of the forest, 
meaning by that, the contrast its stillness presents to 
the hum and motion of busy life. "Wlien you first 
step from the crowded city into the centre of a vast 
wilderness, the absence of all the bustle and activity 
you have been accustomed to makes you at first be- 
lieve there is no sound, no motion there. So a man 
accustomed for a long time to the surges of the ocean 
cannot at first hear the murmur of the rill. Yet these 
solitudes are full of sound, aye, of rare music, too. 
I do not mean the notes of birds, for they rarely sing 
in the darker, deeper portions of the forest. Even the 
robin, which in the fields cannot chirp and carol 
enough, and is so tame that a tyro can shoot him, 



MORNING CONCERT. 195 

ceases his song the moment he enters the forest, and 
flits silently from one lofty branch to another, as if in 
constant fear of a secret enemy. If you want to lis- 
ten to the music of birds, go to some field that borders 
on the woods, and there, before sunrise of a summer 
morning, you will hear such an orchestra as never be- 
fore greeted your ears. There are no dying cadences 
and rapturous bursts and prolonged swells, but one 
continuous strain of joy. Yet there is every variety 
of tone, from the clear, round note of the robin, to the 
shrill piping of the sparrow. No time is kept, and no 
scale is followed — each is striving to outwarble the 
other, and yet there seems the most perfect accord. 
No jar is made by all the conflicting instruments — 
the whole heavens are full of voices tuned to a 
different key — each pausing or breaking in as it suits 
its mood — and yet the harmony remains the same. 
It is unwritten music such as nature furnishes — filling 
the soul with a delight and joy it never before 
experienced. 

But this is found only in the fields — our great 
forests are too sombre and shadowy for such glees. 
Still you find music there. There is a certain kind 
occurring only at intervals, which chills the heart lilce 



196 THE ADIRONDACK. 

a dead-march, and is fearful as the echo of bursting 
billows along the arches of a cavern. The shrill 
scream of a panther in the midst of an impenetrable 
swamp, rising in the intervals of thunder claps — the 
long, discordant howl of a herd of wolves at midnight, 
slowly traveling along the slope of a high mountain, 
you may call strange music ; yet there are certain 
chords in the heart of man, that quiver to it, espe- 
cially when he feels there is no cause of alarm. The 
lowing of a moose, echoing miles away in the gorges 
— ^the solitary cry of the loon in some deep bay — ^the 
solemn hoot of the owl, the only lullaby that cradles 
you to sleep, all have their charms, and stir you at 
times like the blast of a bugle. So the scream of 
the eagle, and cry of the fish-hawk, as they sweep in 
measured circles over the still bosom of a lake after 
their prey, or the low, half suppressed croak of the 
raven — his black form like some messenger of death, 
slowly swinging from one mountain to another — are 
sights and sounds that arrest and chain you. Yet 
these are not all — ^the ear grows sensitive when you 
feel that everything about you treads stealthily ; and 
the slightest noise will sometimes startle you like the 
unexpected crack of a rifle. 



SENSITIVENESS OF THE EAR. 197 

After watching for a long time for deer on the 
banks of some still stream, almost motionless myself, 
the unexpected spring of a trout to the surface has 
sent the blood to my temples as suddenly as though 
it had been the leap of a panther. 

By living in the woods, your sense of hearing be- 
comes so acute that the wilderness never seems silent. 
It is said that a nice and practised ear can hear at 
night, in the full vigor of spring, the low sound of 
growing, bursting vegetation, and in the winter, the 
shooting of crystals, "like moon-beams splintering 
along the ground." So in the forest, there is a faint 
and indistinct hum about you, as if the spreading and 
bursting of the buds and barks of trees, the stretching 
out of the roots into the earth, and the slow and affec- 
tionate interlacing of branches and kiss of leaves, were 
all perceptible to the ear. The passage of the scarcely 
moving air over the unseen tree tops, the motion it 
gives to the trunk — too slight to be detected by the eye 
— the dropping of an imperfect leaf ; all combine to 
produce a monotonous sound, which lulls you into a 
feeling half melancholy and half pleasing. You may, 
on a still summer afternoon, recline for hours on some 
gentle slope, and ILsten without weariness to this low, 



198 THE ADIRONDACK. 

perpetual chant of nature. Sometimes the hollow 
tap of the woodpecker, or the loud, babbling voice 
of the streamlet, rushing under arches of evergreens, 
gives animation to the song. If you are on the bor- 
ders of a lake, the clear and limpid sound of the 
ripples, as they hasten to lay their lips on the smooth 
pebbles, blend in with the anthem, till the soul sinks 
into reveries it dare not speak aloud. 

But there is one kind of forest music I love best of 
all — it is the sound of wind amid the trees. I have 
lain here by the hour, on some fresh afternoon, when 
the brisk west wind swept by in gusts, and listened to 
it. All is comparatively still, w^hen, far away, you 
catch a faint murmur, like the dying tone of an organ 
with its stops closed — gradually swelling into clearer 
distinctness and fuller volume, as if gathering strength 
for some fearful exhibition of its power ; until, at 
length, it rushes like a sudden sea overhead, and 
everything sways and tosses about you. For a mo- 
ment an invisible spirit seems to be near — ^the fresh 
leaves rustle and talk to each other — the pines and 
cedars whisper ominous tidings, and then the retiring 
swell subsides in the distance, and silence again 
slowly settles on the forest. A short interval only 



MUSIC OF THE WIND. 199 

elapses when the murmur, the swell, the rush, and 
the retreat, are repeated. If you abandon yourself 
entirely to the mfluence, yon soon are lost in strange 
illusions. I have lain and listened to the wind mov- 
ing thus among the branches, until I fancied every 
gust a troop of spirits, whose tread over the bending 
tops I caught afar, and whose rapid approach I could 
distinctly measure. My heart would throb and pulses 
bound, as the invisible squadrons drew near, till as 
their sounding chariots of air swept swiftly overhead, 
I ceased listening, and turned to look. Thus troop 
after troop, they came and went on their mysterious 
mission — waking the solitude into sudden life, as they 
passed, and filling it with glorious melody. 

From such a state of reverie I was once aroused by 
my Indian guide quietly saying, "It blows most too 
hard to fish to-night." Oh, yes, it blows too hard : ye 
splendid train of spirits treading the soft and velvet 
bosom of the boundless forest, and with ten times ten 
thousand branches and twigs and leaves for harp 
strings, discoursing sweet music, you march alto- 
gether too heavily, and sing too loudly for good fish- 
ing. Oood Mitchell, you are right ; those spirits have 
kicked the lake all into a bubble. Wc both have 



200 THE ADIRONDACK. 

been listening to this wind, but with how different 
ears — you as a practical man, and I as a dreamer. I 
am half a mind to tell you what I have been thinking 
about, just to see your black eyes stare. But it is of 
no use ; we must take a little salt pork instead of 
trout for supper to-night — thanks to the '' forest 
music." 

Yours truly. 




il 



XXIII. 



RAQUETTE LAKE NUMBER OF ITS TROUT A HUNTER's 

LOVE FOR AN EAGLE FIERCE STRUGGLE BETWEEN AN 

EAGLE AND A SALMON. 

Raquette Lake, August. 
Dear H : 

It is only about a mile and a half from Crotched or 
Forked to Raquette Lake. For about three quarters 
of a mile up the inlet, where Mitchell shot the 
deer the first night we arrived at Forked Lake, it is 
fair rowing to the falls — then for a half a mile you are 
compelled to shoulder your boats. But at length the 
beautiful sheet of Raquette Lake opens on the view, 
shining like an opal amid an interminable mass of 
green. Stretching away for nearly thirteen miles, it 
lies embosomed in the unshorn shores, and reflecting 
in its pellucid depths the clouds, as they float over the 
heavens which seem immeasurably high hero in this 



202 THE ADIRONDACK. 

clear atmosphere — and presents one of the most beau- 
tiful scenes the eye ever rested upon. When, how- 
ever, the mountain storm sweeps over its breast, and 
the confined thunder breaks and bursts upon it, it 
looks like any thing but a gentle being. 

It is the largest body of water in this wild region, 
and with a shore as irregular as it could well be 
made. Though only thirteen miles long and six 
broad, it has a coast of fifty miles in extent. With 
its long, wooded points and promontories and deep 
bays, it would look, to a man placed above it, like 
a huge scollop. This waving outline completely 
deceives one, in sailing over it, as to the extent 
and direction of the main body of water. As you 
round one point, the lake seems to take a turn, 
for it goes miles away, piercing the very heart of 
the distant forest. But, by the time a second point 
is weathered, a broad and beautiful surface is seen 
spreading in another direction. Thus there is a 
constant succession of new views — in fact, as you 
slowly float along, you seem to behold a dozen dif- 
ferent lakes, each rivalling the other in picturesque 
beauty. It has three large inlets, one of which 
comes from the Eckford, or, as the hunters call 



HUTS OF HUNTERS. 203 

them, Blue Mountain and Tallow Lakes, pouring a 
stream of crystal into its bosom. The south inlet is 
a river of such magnitude that it can be navigated 
for eight miles by a boat of a ton's burthen. The 
third is Brown's inlet, of almost half the size of the 
former. 

Imagine this broad expanse of water in the midst 
of a vast wilderness, dotted with islands, with deep 
bays fringed with green — ^bold slopes reaching to the 
clouds, clothed with green — distant mountains en- 
folding mountains, all waving with the same rich 
verdure — blue peaks dreaming far away, and far up 
in the heavens, and not a sign of vegetation — not 
a boat to break the solitude, and you will have 
some idea of the sights that meet you at every 
turn, charming the soul into pleasure. 

Thus rowing along, with no living thing but the 
wild bird, and wilder deer, which has come down from 
the mountains to drink, and raises his head as the 
sound of your voice is borne to his ear, to interrupt 
the Sabbath quietness around, you at length come 
in sight of '' Indian Point," so called because there 
was once an Indian settlement upon it. Now two 
huts are standing there, looking like oases in the 



204 THE ADIRONDACK. 

desert, occupied by two men, who dwell thus shut 
out from civilized life. 

These two cabins are the only ones on this whole 
fifty miles of coast,* and the two hunters that 
occupy them the only inhabitants that are or have 
been on the shore for the last nine years. With- 
out a wife or child they have lived here winter 
and summer, as ignorant of what is going on in the 
great world without, and as indifferent to it as the 
savage of the Rocky Mountains. One of them was 
once a wealthy manufacturer ; but overtaken by suc- 
cessive misfortunes, he at length fled to the wilder- 
ness, where he has ever since lived. There is also a 
rumor, of some love adventure — of blasted affections 
followed by morbid melancholy, which is probably 
" ower true" — being the cause of this strange self- 
exile. 

However that may be, here he lives, and here he is 
likely to live and be buried. These two Robinson Cru- 
soes have cleared about ten acres of land, on which 
they raise such vegetables as they need, while the 
fishing line and rifle supplies them with meat. An 
easy life is theirs — no taxes to pay — no purchases to 
'■' There are others now. 



EASY TROUTING. 205 

make — and during most of the year, fish and deer 
and moose ready to come almost at their call. 

This beautiful lake is thronged with salmon and 
speckled trout. Talk about Pisico Lake and Lake 
Pleasant, and other border waters, where fishing has 
become a business. Come here, if you wish to see 
the treasures the wilderness encloses. The most 
beautiful and savory trout that ever swam are found 
in such quantities that you can take them without 
even a fly, or bait of any description. Look at that 

inlet — ^there sits my friend B n with a pole and 

line big enough to play a sturgeon with, and nothing 
but a piece of white paper on his coarse hook. He is 
skipping it, or as the fishermen call it, " skittering " 
it over the water, and there rises a two pounder, 
and there a three pounder, and a one pounder by his 
side — ^heigh ho, a full dozen of them, with their 
speckled, gleaming sides and wild eyes, are making 
the water foam about it. The hungry, unsophisti- 
cated fellows have never yet learned that there is such 
a thing as a hook, and dart fiercely at every object 
that tempts their appetite, without fear of being 
caught. You can sit here of a fine dav, and with 
bait take out these speckled trout till your arms 



206 THE ADIRONDACK. 

ache with lifting them. No sooner does the worm, or 
piece of venison, sink in the water than they crowd 
round it in swarms. 

The salmon trout are noble fellows — these two 
hunters say they have caught them weighing over 
thirty pounds. 

I have often been struck with the singular attach- 
ment hunters sometimes have for some bird or ani- 
mal, while all the rest of the species they pursue with 
deadly hostility. 

About five hundred yards from Beach's hut, stands 
a lofty pine tree, on which a grey eagle has built its 
nest annually during the nine years he has lived on 
the shores of the Raquette. The Indian who dwelt 
there before him, says that the same pair of birds 
made their nest on that tree for ten years previous 
— making in all, nineteen years they have occu- 
pied the same spot, and built on the same branch. 
It is possible, however, that the young may have 
taken the place of their parents. At all events. 
Beach believes them to be the same old dwellers, and 
hence regards them as squatters like himself, and en- 
titled to equal privileges. From his cabin door he 
can see them in sunshine and storm — quietly perched 



hunter's love of an eagle. 207 

on the tall pine, or wildly cradled as the mighty 
fabric bonds and sways to the blast. He has become 
attached to them, and hence requests every one who 
visits him not to touch them. I verily believe he 
would like to shoot the man who should harm one 
of their feathers. They are his companions in that 
solitude — proud occupants of the same wild home, 
and hence bound together by a link it would be hard 
to define, and yet which is strong as steel. If that 
pine tree should fall, and those eagles move away to 
some other lake, he would feel as if he had lost a 
friend, and the solitude become doubly lonely. 

Thus it is — you cannot by any education or expe- 
rience, drive all the poetry out of a man — it lingers 
there still, and blazes up unexpectedly — revealing the 
human heart with all the sympathies, attachments, 
and tenderness that belong to it. 

He, however, one day came near losing his bold 
eagle. He was lying at anchor, fishing, when he saw 
his favorite bird high up in heaven, slowly sweeping 
round and round in a huge circle, evidently awaiting 
the approach of a fish to the surface. For an hour or 
more, he thus sailed with motionless wings above the 
water, when all at once he stopped and hovered a mo- 



208 THE ADIRONDACK. 

ment, with an excited gesture — then rapid as a flash 
of light, and with a rush of his broad pinions, hke the 
passage of a sudden gust of wind, came to the still 
bosom of the lake. He had seen a huge salmon trout 
swimming near the surface — and plunging from his 
high watch-tower, drove his talons deep in his vic- 
tim's back. So rapid and strong was his swoop that 
he buried himself out of sight when he struck, but the 
next moment he emerged into view, and flapping his 
wings, endeavored to rise with his prey. But this 
time he had miscalculated his strength — in vain he 
struggled nobly to lift the salmon from the water. 
The frightened and bleeding fish made a sudden dive, 
and took eagle and all out of sight, and was gone a 
quarter of a minute. Again they arose to the surface, 
and the strong bird spread his broad, dripping pinions, 
and gathering force with his rapid blows, raised the 
salmon half out of water. The weight, however, was 
too great for him, and he sank again to the surface, 
beating the water into foam about him. The salmon 
then made another dive, and they both went under, 
leaving only a few bubbles to tell where they had 
gone down. This time they were absent a full half 
minute, and Beach said he thought it was all over 



FIGHT BETWEEN A TROUT AND EAGLE. 209 

with his bird. He soon, however, reappeared with his 
talons still buried in the flesh of his foe, and again 
made a desperate effort to rise. All this time the fish 
was shooting like an arrow through the lake, carrying 
his relentless foe on his back. He could not keep the 
eagle down, nor the bird carry him up — and so now 
beneath, and now upon the surface, they struggled on, 
presenting one of the most singular yet exciting 
spectacles that can be imagined. It was fearful to 
witness the blows of the eagle as he lashed the lake 
with his wings into spray, and made the shores echo 
with the report. At last, the bird thinking, as they 
say west, that he had " waked up the wrong pas- 
senger," gave it up ; and loosening his clutch, soared 
heavily and slowly away to his lofty pine tree, where 
he sat for a long time sullen and sulky — the picture 
of disappointed ambition. So might a wounded and 
baffled lion lie down in his lair and brood over his de- 
feat. Beach said that he could easily have captured 
them, but he thought he would see the fight out. 
"When, however, they both staid under a half minute 
or more, he concluded he should never see his eagle 
again. Whether the latter in his rage was bent on 
capturing his prize, and would retain his hold though 



210 THE ADIRONDACK. 

at the hazard of his life, or whether in his terrible 
swoop he had struck his crooked talons so deep in the 
back of the salmon, he could not extricate himself, the 
hunter said he could not tell. The latter, however, 
was doubtless the truth, and he would have been glad 
to have let go, long before he did. The old fellow 
probably spent the afternoon in studying avoirdupois 
weight, and ever after tried his tackle on smaller fish. 
As for the poor salmon, if he survived the severe 
laceration, he doubtless never fully understood the 
operation he had gone through. 



XXIV. 



DESCRIPTION OF RAQUETTE LAKE ABUNDANCE OF ITS 

FISH LAKE ELDON ITS QUEER DISCOVERY A MAN 

WHIPPED BY AN EAGLE A HUNTER WITHOUT FEET. 

The Woods, August. 

Dear H : 

I DESIGNED to givc jou a lengthy description of Ra- 
quette Lake, which surpasses all the others in the 
beauty of its scenery, and can hardly be matched in 
the wide world. I was the more anxious to do this, 
because its sloping shores and fertile land make it 
the most desirable portion of this whole region for 
settlers. The Adirondack chain terminates here in 
the isolated peak of Mount Emmons, and the land 
sinks into an elevated plateau, furnishing many in- 
ducements to the emigrant. In place of this, how- 
ever, I give you an extract from an interesting letter 



212 



THE ADIRONDACK. 



which I received from a gentleman who has spent 
months around the Raquette. 

"There are, perhaps, but few sections in our coun- 
try, where the amateur of the beauties of nature, and 
the lover of sport, can better enjoy a few days of 
retreat from the thronged city and the cares of busi- 
ness, than at Raquette Lake. Here he feels liberated 
from the restraints of organized society, and meets the 
rude yet agreeable change, produced by an escape from 
the formalities of the world — indeed, he enters upon 
the enjoyment of that pure and artless freedom which 
the society of nature alone can impart. As a striking 
proof of the effect of this change, one can scarcely 
turn his attention from the objects around him, to the 
calculations of business, or the schemes of selfishness 
and pride — and I venture to say, if the mines of Cali- 
fornia were planted upon the shores of this beautiful 
lake, the miser even, would forsake his sordid labor, 
till he had viewed and re-viewed the enchanting land- 
scape around him, while the man of taste would be 
absorbed as it were, in the midst of a new creation ; 
and not an hour would pass, but what he would find 
something to admire, or amuse him. 
"The natural scenery of the Raquette is, however, 



RAQUETTE LAKE. 213 

not SO much distinguished for its sublimity as its 
beauty. Unlike the lakes of Switzerland, those of 
northern New York, making an extensive chain from 
the Saranac waters to the Moose River Lakes, are not 
surrounded by summits of perpetual snow, nor by- 
naked rocks towering one above another in fragmen- 
tary peaks and disordered masses, but, for the most 
part, especially the south-western, are surrounded by 
gently-receding shores, swelling into moderate ridges, 
and bounding the view with a clear and beautiful 
outline of green hills — with here and there a conical 
mountain-top elevated in the distance. Nor do we, 
about the Raquette, discover any Alpine glaciers glit- 
tering in the sun, or huge masses of ice thundering 
down from their heights to the valleys below, but the 
country is made up of a broad plateau^ elegantly 
varied upon its surface, and clothed by a rich and 
luxurious forest, and excelling all the others in the 
beauty of its situation, as well as in the fertility of 
its soil. 

"As we take a more particular view of this lake, and 
the objects of interest in its immediate vicinity, we 
are at first struck with the crystal purity of its 
waters, and the irregularity of its form. Its waters 



214 THE ADIRONDACK. 

are so clear, that objects on a bright, sunny day, can 
be seen to the depth of thirty or forty feet — the 
angler often finds himself in a state of suspense, 
between hope and fear, as he looks into the depths of 
the lake, and sees his speckled majesty darting about 
the hook, artfully trying the bait. 

The irregular form of the lake also, when the 
whole from some eminence is brought under the eye 
of the spectator, presents an interesting feature 
in the prospect. It is wholly embraced within 
an area of seven miles square, and yet it is so in- 
dented with deep bays, projecting points, and head- 
lands, that it presents a shore of about fifty miles in 
extent, varying to every point of the compass, and 
marking the outlines of the lalie, with a continuous 
round of graceful curves and angles; all of which 
are highly embellished by clusters of tall pines that 
stand upon the points, and skirt the shores, flinging 
their darkening shadows upon the water — while the 
thick wood and level surface, that fall back for some 
distance from the lake, gives a mellow aspect to the 
whole, and a highly satisfying indication of the cha- 
racter of the adjacent lands. But the islands that 
dot the lake with Ihoir dark, green forms, in lively 



THE OSPRAY. 215 

contrast with the silvery surface of the waters that 
embrace them, are the most interesting objects con- 
nected with this landscape. From fifteen to twenty 
in number, they vary in size and form, from mere 
islets that cluster together in fantastic groups, to those 
of sufficient size for ordinary farms. Ospray Island, 
lying across the bay, one mile south of Beach and 
Woods, and half a mile west of Jos. Woods on 
Ospray Point, contains about thirty acres. This island 
derived its name from the ospray, that yearly builds 
her nest and rears her young thereon. Her nest 
is a prominent object in the view, being some three 
feet in diameter, and planted upon the top of the high- 
est of a cluster of stately pines ; and is so strongly 
interwoven with boughs and grass, as to resist the 
wind and storm. The sportsman delights to gaze 
upon this bird of solitude, as she returns from her ex- 
cursions up the lake in quest of food, bearing the 
struggling trout in her talons, while her unfledged 
offspring, standing upon the verge of their aerial 
house, with untutored voices and fluttering wings, 
welcome her return. None disturb her domicile, or 
question her right to protection. 

•' Woods' Island, containing about three hundred 



216 THE ADIRONDACK. 

acres, lies in the southerly section of the lake. It 
has a level surface, fine dry soil, shaded with a clean 
and tasteful forest of beech and maple. In a warm 
summer's day, a ramble over this island, enjoying its 
shady groves, its gentle breezes from the lake, and its 
charming scenery, is truly delightful. Off its eastern 
extremity is a group of four islands, of nearly equal 
size, rising up out of the water, and studding the 
lake with their high conical forms, and their steep 
yet graceful shores. To the south the eye ranges 
along the blue surface of South Bay, until it rests 
upon the white sand beach that encircles its extrem- 
ity; marking a line of separation between the land 
and the water, as white as a line of snow. This 
bay, moreover, is the favorite place of resort for the 
sportsman. Here the stately buck, after trying his 
speed with the honnd, is wont to seek his safety by 
plunging into the water — ^unconscious that there is a 
worse enemy at hand, than the brute that hangs 
upon his track. 

"Let the spectator overlook a scene like this, and 
at the same time bring within the scope of his vision 
the whole southern section of the lake, with its 
islands, indented shores, and conterminous fores<-s, 



HAUNTS OF TROUT. 21/ 

and a richer and more picturesque view can scarcely 

be imagined. Add to this the sullen stillness of the 

wilderness, where nature, unmarred by the hand of 

man, dwells in her primeval glory — ^her music the 

pealing thunder — the eagle's shrill voice — the wild 

notes of the loon — and the sound of the gentle breeze 

as it ruffles the surface of the lake — and no man of 

sensibility can escape the enchantment 

'^ The inlets of the lake form another interesting 

feature connected with its scenery. These, for the 

first few miles from the lake, move sluggishly along 

the valleys, through which they pass with singular 

tortuous windings, and of sufficient depth to float boats 

of large size. In the warm summer months, these 

inlets become the place of resort for the trout, where 

they are often taken with the hook in great numbers. 

They collect in schools around the cold springs that 

make into the inlets, and if approached with care 

and skill may be taken out, so eager are they for the 

bait, to the last, in the school. They will even dash 

at the hook as it approaches the surface of the water, 

and as the pole from time to time bends under the 

weight of its load, the skillful angler will deliberately 

bring his unwary captive t>o the shore. The salmon. 
10 



218 THE ADIRONDACK. 

or lake trout, however, seeks his summer retreat in 
the depths of the lake. These are usually found in 
its northern section, and are taken from a boat, with 
a long line let deep into the water. This is a more 
sober business, and often taxes the patience of the 
angler, before he feels the cautious bite — but if he is 
so fortunate as to fix his bearded hook in the jaws of 
his victim, he swells with pride and glories in his vic- 
tory, as he plies the reel, or tugs at the line, and with 
hand over hand draws the ponderous fish into the 
boat. The largest trout of this description, known to 
have been taken in the lake, weighed forty-five 
pounds. Such a prize ought to satisfy the reasonable 
ambition of any sportsman. 

" The Marion River is the largest inlet of the lake. 
It comes in from the east, and forms the connecting 
link between the Raquette and the Eckford Lakes. 
The valley embracing this stream and the last men- 
tioned lakes, extends due east from the Raquette 
some twenty miles, and terminates at the base of 
Mount Emmons, which flings up its round head and 
giant form far above the blue range of hills that 
stretch on to the southeast. Mount Emmons is the 
most westerly of that group of high mountains that 



A BEAUTIFUL LAKE. 219 

occupy the section of country between the Eckford 
Lakes and Lake Champlain ; and overlooking the 
valley of the Raquette, forms the most prominent 
object in view towards the east. South and "West 
inlets are also navigable streams, but more tortuous, 
if possible, in their course, than the Marion River. 
The boatman in passing up the west inlet, rows four 
miles to gain two in distance ; he then arrives at the 
portage between the Raquette and Moose River 
waters. 

" Nearly opposite Indian Point, connected with the 
Raquette by a small inlet only ten feet wide and four 
rods in length, there is a beautiful little lake, about 
one mile long and half a mile wide, of oval form, con- 
cealed in a rich, dark forest, where the pine, spruce, 
and hemlock, are gracefully intermixed with decidu- 
ous trees. This lovely retreat, called Lake Eldon, is 
protected from the winds in every direction, and 
affords a calm and delightful resort. 

" Eagle Lake, which is an object of interest and 
curiosity, lies about three miles due south from the 
mouth of West Inlet, and two miles east of Eighth 
Lake. It is of small dimensions, not varying essen- 
tially from eighty chains in length, and forty ia 



220 THE ADIRONDACK. 

breadth. This lake was discovered under circum- 
stances somewhat amusing ; and in a manner that 
presented its features in a bold and impressive aspect. 
Two gentlemen with their packs on their backs, left 
the east shore of Eighth Lake, in search of a lake 
discovered by Prof. Emmons, lying in that vicinity ; 
but, as afterwards appeared, to the south of the one 
in question. After tugging some four or five hours, 
and surmounting several high ridges, crossing valleys, 
climbing over wind-falls, and tearing their way 
through the thick under-brush, they came to the sum- 
mit of a still higher ridge, covered with thick 
spruces, so dense and dark, as to obstruct the view in 
every direction. Here they seated themselves upon a 
log to rest, and while calculating upon the probable 
proximity to the object of their search, they were 
startled by the cracking of the dry brush, under the 
footsteps of some heavy animal. They had left their 
trusty rifle behind them to lighten their burden, and 
their onty means of defence consisted in an antiquated 
pistol, a family relic, that had seen much service, 
but which in this age of revolvers and improvements 
was, to say the least, of doubtful character. They, 
however, placed themselves in a posture of defence — 



MYSTERIOUS RIDE. 221 

the redoubtable knight of the pistol, holding on to his 
anchorage on the log ; while his defenceless compa- 
nion veered round upon his stern, and took up his 
position squat^ in the rear — this last movement having 
doubtless been made, not so much with a view to 
personal protection, as to form a corps de reserve^ to 
fall upon the foe in the heat of the conflict. The 
heavy footsteps of the beast drew near, but the 
thicket still concealed him from their view. This 
suspense, however, did not continue long ; for in 
due time, old Bruin presented his black visage, 
raised liimself erect upon his haunches, skinned his 
teeth, uttered his hideous growl, and viewed the 
strangers with his keen, black eye. After exchanging 
glances for a short time, however. Bruin came to the 
conclusion "that discretion was the better part of 
valor," and with manifest symptoms of alarm, turned 
and fled, with the bullet from old '76 w^histling 
through the thicket, in pursuit. Thus ended the 
fright and the bloodless contest, probably to the entire 
satisfaction of both parties concerned. But this ad- 
venture was followed by another, if not so dangerous, 
yet somewhat more amusing — which gave the name 
to the lake in question. Our travelers having been 



222 THE ADIRONDACK. 

relieved from their unwelcome visitor, concluded, 
before they proceeded on with their journey, to take 
an observation from the high grounds where they 
were, with a view to examine the country to the 
south and east, and discover, if possible, the position 
of the lake, which was the object of their search. To 
accomplish this purpose, the knight of the pistol 
volunteered his services to climb a tall spruce that 
stood near by ; and accordingly flung aside his pack, 
pulled off his boots, and depositing them ivith his 
armor, at the foot of the tree, commenced the ascent. 
After climbing some fifty or sixty feet, his ears were 
suddenly pierced by the screams of a huge eagle, and 
his face at the same time brushed by her wings, 
and torn by her claws. As the enraged bird passed 
round her airy circuit, repeating her sharp and threat- 
ening notes, the eye of the adventurer fell upon a 
deep, black lake below him, and he for the first time 
discovered that the tree he had ascended stood upon 
the brink of a precipice of fearful height, overhanging 
the dark abyss where the jealous bird of liberty had 
planted her nest, and secured her young. By this 
time the gathering foe had again made her circle, 
and coming like an arrow through the air, pounced 



FIGHT WITH AN EAGLE. 223 

upon his head, and striking her talons through his 
cap and wig, tore them from his naked scalp, and 
hurled them to the ground. Not exactly a back out^ 
but a back down, was the immediate result — and the 
vanquished knight, as he landed upon terra fir ma, 
audibly thanked his stars, and remarked to his com- 
panion, that his satisfaction was unbounded ; seeing 
that the matter had ended no worse — and as they pro- 
ceeded to gather up the " duds," they entered upon a 
discourse, wherein the rules of chivalry were gravely 
considered, and a decision soberly made, that there 
was no loss of honor in the affair ; since such cases 
were of rare occurrence and did not happen under 
those circumstances by which a man's courage and 
valor were ordinarily tested. 

On examining the lake, it was found that it was 
nearly surrounded by rocks, for the most part of per- 
pendicular ascent, rising like a wall of masonry with 
its face to the lake, and from two to three hundred 
feet above the surface of the water. It was of oval 
form, and gave the appearance of an immense reser- 
voir prepared by art — a section of its western wall, 
however, overhung the water, forming a high arched 
cavern beneath. No streams were discovered falling 



224 THE ADIRONDACK. 

into the lake, but an outlet, running constantly /row 
it, was noticed at the extreme south end, where the 
heights became depressed and fell to a level with the 
surface of this secluded yet interesting object of 
nature. A day spent in visiting this little lake will 
well repay the toil and labor it will cost. 

Our travelers took an easterly direction from this 
point ; and after undergoing the fatigue of the day, 
wearied to excess, hungry, chafed, and with their 
faces swollen from the bite of the poisonous flies, they 
arrived at night at an old hunter's lodge (near the 
lower falls of South Inlet) covered with bark, and as 
usual in such half-decayed shanties, filled with filth 
and vermin. Here necessity drove them to take up 
their quarters for the night — they accordingly struck 
up a fire, disposed of a few hard crackers, and a rem- 
nant of unsavory venison well jammed and mellowed, 
and before the light of day had fully disappeared, 
flung themselves down to rest. But the process of 
hardening against the bite of the flea, as a necessary 
preparation for sleep, was to be undergone ; and 
while this was in progress, the agonizing knight of the 
pistol rolled over upon his back, drew up his knees, 
and with his journal and pencil in hand, gave vent to 



SETTLERS. 225 

his experience in a poetical stanza — which he then 
and there entered down upon his diary, as follows : 

"'In this rude spot, where weary pilgrims rest, 
With bugs, and' fleas, and fetid venison blessed, 
With swollen limbs, unfit to rest or range, 
We breathe the smoke of Catamount Exchange. 
Meanwhile, our eyes are closed, by poisonous gnats and fli^s, 
And ' * * * * * 

"It is proper to remark, that the interesting section 
of country connected with the Raquette is now flung 
open to easy access, by the recent completion of the 
Champlain and Carthage road, which passes near the 
northern shore of Raquette Lake. Light carriages, 
and teams with heavy loads, may pass from Lake 
Champlain, or the Black River valley, to this lake. 
Township forty, embracing the most desirable section 
of land in that vicinity, already contains a few fami- 
lies who have broken into the wilderness and com- 
menced their improvements ; and the prospect is, 
that this township will soon be occupied by pros- 
perous and enterprising settlers. Those who reside 
there, not only enjoy their beautiful localities, pure 
water, and healthful atmosphere, but their crops 

of Indian corn, wheat, potatoes, and garden veget- 
10* 



226 THE ADIRONDACK. 

ables. The first persons who came into this town^ 
ship were Messrs. Beach and Woods, who planted 
their rude dwelling upon Indian Point, command- 
ing a most interesting view of the lake and its 
islands. The case of Mr. "Woods should not pass 
unnoticed ; as it furnishes an instance of man's 
capacity to overcome the serious deprivations rarely 
to be found. By exposure in the woods and snow 
through a cold winter's night, his feet and limbs 
were so badly frozen, that it became necessary to 
amputate both below the knee joints. Since that 
time he has used his knees as a substitute for feet ; 
and, strange as it may seem, he follows his line of 
traps for miles through the wilderness, or with rifle in 
hand, hops through the woods in pursuit of deer. He 
may be seen plying his oars, and driving his little 
bark over the lakes and along the streams ; and when 
he comes to a portage, the upturned boat will sur- 
mount his head, and take its course to the adjacent 
waters. His is a case that proves that there are 
instances in reality, 'where truth is stranger than 
fiction.' " 

Yours, &c. 



XXV. 



SIGHTS AND SOUNDS BEACH AND WOODS ^A VISIT OP 

THIRTY MILES MADE BY A WOMAN. 

Raquette Lake, August. 
Dear H : 

You can spend days and weeks around the Ra- 
quette, sailing over its beautiful waters, penetrating 
its deep and quiet bays, taking trout at every cast of 
your line, and killing a deer whenever you choose to 
put forth the effort. The sun rises on you from this 
green wilderness fresh as when it first looked on crea- 
tion, and sets as lovingly in the mass of green, on the 
western slope, as though it had seen no sin and suf- 
fering in its course. 

Let the light canoe rock awhile on the tiny waves 
that this glorious western breeze, redolent with the 
kiss of leaves, and pure from its long dalliance with 
nature, has set in motion. The shadows are flitting 



228 



THE ADIRONDACK. 



like sweet visions along that far-stretching slope of 
brilliant green, and disappear one after another over 
the summit. Yonder is a deer walking up and down 
the shore in the water, ever and anon lifting his ant- 
lered head, lest the garish day might reveal him to 
some lurking foe ; and lo, there comes his consort, 
her w^hite breast shining amid the leaves, as she also 
steps forth to drink. And here, out of this narrow 
cove, completely enveloped in bushes that sweep the 
water, and reeds that grow almost across its entrance 
— which seems to lurk in perpetual ambush on the 
shore — a wild duck from the Atlantic is leading forth 
her brood which she has hatched in this far-seques- 
tered spot. "What a chattering they make as they 
swim after the proud matron who is pushing boldly 
for a point near by. They move in the form of the 
figure V inverted, and the still water of the cove as- 
sumes the same shape clear to the shore. But the 
ever-watchful mother has caught sight of our boat, 
and prattling to her offspring, is off with incredible 
speed. She knows her young cannot fly, and hence 
will not rise herself from the water. True to her 
m.aternal instinct, she is willing to bide the worst, but 
both wings and feet of the whole chattering squadron 



MATERNAL INSTINCT. 220 

are in full play, making the lake foam where they 
pass. There, you are once more in the reeds, settling 
yourselves with a vast deal of self-congratulation into 
composure again, while your black heads and eyes 
turn and nod to catch the first approach of danger. 
Poor things, you are safe here ; but next fall every rod 
of your flight from Montauk Point to Barnegat Bay, 
will be disturbed by the shot of the sportsman, and 
scarcely a pair of you will be left to revisit this far 
retreat again ! 

Vain dreaming this, I know, but the listless mood 
is upon me, and I cannot pull a strong and steady and 
practical stroke. The waves are out on a frolic — the 
deer stand idly lashing their tails in the water — the 
great, green forest just rustles to show that the 
leaves are all at play — the clouds move lazily across 
the sky and all nature seems dreaming in this fresh 
noon-day — and why should / not drink in the influ- 
ence of the scene ? I know a hard afternoon's toil is 
before me, and a bivouack on the ground at night, yet 
I seem enchained here by beauty. Sad thoughts and 
gentle feelings rise one after another an indistinguish- 
able throng, and strange memories long since buried, 
come bade with overpowering freshness. Here the 



230 THE ADIRONDACK. 

great world of strife and toil speaks not, and its fierce 
struggles for gain seem the madness of the maniac. 
You do not hate it — you pity it, and pity yourself that 
you ever loved it. The good you had forgotten re- 
turns, for nature wakes up the dead divinity within 
you, and rouses the soul to purer, nobler purposes. 
Besides, all things are free about me — ^the leap of the 
wave — the dash of the mountain stream — the flight 
of the eagle — ^the song of the wind, and the swaying of 
trees — all, all are free. Unmarred, unstained, the 
bright and happy world is spread out in my sight : 

"Ah, when the wild turmoil of this wearisome life, 
With its scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife ; 
The proud man's power, and the base man's fear — 
The scorner's laugh, and the sufferer's tear — 
And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly, 
Dispose me to musing and dark melancholy : 
When my bosom is full, and my thoughts are high, 
And my soul is sick with the bondman's sigh — 
Oh, then, there is freedom, and joy, and pride, 
Afar through the ' forest' alone to ride, 
With the death-fraught firelock in my hand. 
The only law of the desert land."' 

But to return to practical matters : yonder comes 



BEACH AND WOODS. 231 

the boat of "Woods and Beach, the two solitary dwell- 
ers of this region. It is rather a singular coincidence 
that the only two inhabitants of this wilderness 
should be named Woods and Beach. I should not 
wonder if the next comers should be called ^^ Hem- 
lock^^ and " Piney These two men have killed 
hundreds of deer since they settled down here to- 
gether, and a great many moose. Their leisure hours 
they spend in preparing the furs they have taken, and 
in tanning the deer skins, of which they make mittens. 
They need something during the long winter days and 
evenings for employment. When the snow is five feet 
deep on the level, and the ice three and four feet 
thick on the lake, and not the sign of a human foot- 
step any where to be seen, the smoke of their cabin 
rises in the frosty air like a column in the desert — 
enhancing instead of relieving the solitude. The 
pitch pine supplies the place of candles, and the deep, 
red light from their hum.ble window, at night, must 
present a singular contrast with the rude waste of 
snow, and the leafless forest around them. 

When a quantity of these mittens are made up, 
Beach straps on his snow shoes, and with his trusty 
rifle in his hand, carries them out to the settlements, 



232 THE ADIRONDACK. 

where they meet with a ready sale — for mittens made 
here in the woods are known to be "made upon 
honor." No bufF-colored sheepskin comes from the 
shores of Raquette Lake, nor is the stout buckskin 
spoiled by destructive materials used to expedite the 
tanning. 

Since the above was written, I am informed by my 
friend B — n that another family, composed of a man, 
his wife, and seven children, has emigrated to Ra- 
quette Lake. This woman — ^the only one now on the 
shores of the Raquette — took, last summer, an infant 
six months old, and a daughter fourteen years of age, 
and started for a clearing thirty miles distant, on a 
visit. Now carrying the boat on her head around the 
rapids — in one place two miles on a stretch while 
the girl lugged along the infant and oars — now stem- 
ming the swift current, and anon floating over the bo- 
som of a calm lake, she pursued her toilsome way — 
accomplishing the thirty miles by night. What think 
you of that ? As Captain Cuttle would say, " she is 
a woman as is a woman." To make a visit of 
thirty miles through an unbroken forest, with a babe 
six months old, and a girl only fourteen years of age, 
and carrv and row her own boot the whole distance, 



VISIT OF THIRTY MII.ES. 233 

is "spinning street yarn" on a large scale. I hope 
she had a glorious gossip to pay her for her trouble. 
It shows most conclusively that the visiting propen- 
sity, so strong in woman, is not a conventional thing, 
but inherent — belonging to her very nature. 

This woman deserves to be the first on Raquette 
Lake. She bids fair to have seven children more, and 
I trust, when she dies, a monument will be erected to 

her memory. 

Yours, &c. 



XXVI, 



FOREST TROUTING A FAMILY OF THIRTEEN GIRLS 

RIDING "bare back" A CURIOUS HORSE RACE. 

August. 

Dear H > 

From the Raquette your nearest way out of the 
woods is towards the Black River country. Ascend- 
ing the Brown Tract Inlet four miles, you carry your 
boat over a portage two miles in extent to the Eighth 
Moose Lake, which forms the summit level of the 
waters of this region — those on the west flowing west 
into the Black River. This sheet of water is the first 
of a chain of lakes, eight in number, connected by 
streams, and forming a group of surpassing beauty. 
Being on the height of land, it is filled wholly by 
springs and rills, and of course its water is unrivalled 
in clearness and coldness. It is completely embo- 



MOOSE LAKES. 235 

somed in trees, while a beach of sand, white as the 
driven snow, and ahiiost as fine as table salt, shows 
between the green frame work of the forest and the 
lake, presenting a beautiful and strange contrast 
here in this land of rocks and cliffs. The bottom is 
composed of this white sand also, and can be seen 
through the clear water at an astonishing depth. In 
such cold water, with such a clear bottom, how can 
the trout be otherwise than delicious ? 

This charming sheet of water is about three miles 
in length, with an average width of a mile and a 
half. 

The seven lakes that follow are not a mere repeti- 
tion of the first, but vary both in size and shape, with 
a different frame-work of hills. The change is ever 
from beauty to beauty, yet a separate description 
would seem monotonous. 

There they repose, like a bright chain in the forest, 
the links connected by silver bars. You row slowly 
through one to its outlet, and then, entering a clear 
stream, overhung with bushes, or fringed with lofty 
trees, seem to be suddenly absorbed by the wilder- 
ness. At length, however, you emerge as from a 
cavern, and lo ! an untroubled lake, with all its varia- 



236 THE ADIRONDACK. 

tions of coast, and timber, and islands, greets the eye. 
Through this you also pass like one in a dream, 
wondering why such beauty is wasted where the eye 
of man rarely beholds it. Another narrow outlet 
receives you, and guiding your frail canoe along the 
rapid current, you are again swallowed up by the 
wilderness, to be born anew in a lovelier scene. Thus 
on, as if under a wizard's spell, you move along, 
alternately lost in the narrow channels, and strug- 
gling to escape the rocks on which the current would 
drive you, then floating over a broad expanse, extend- 
ing as far as the eye can see into the mountains 
beyond. 

A ride through these eight lakes is an episode in a 
man's life he can never forget. It furnishes a new 
experience — gives rise to a new train of thoughts and 
feelings, and opens to the dweller of our cities an 
entirely new world. 

They vary in size from two to six miles, except 
the fifth and eighth, which are mere ponds. Thus, for 
more than twenty miles, you float through this prime- 
val wilderness in a skiff that can be carried on the 
head, and yet are not compelled to take it from the 



A GRAVE IN THE FOREST. 237 

water but once, the whole distance, and then only 
to pass over some five hundred yards. 

Near the foot of the first lake, (or last in the 
route,) is "murderer's point," where a white man, 
some ten years since, shot an Indian. The latter, 
who was trapping around these waters, in some v^ay 
gave offence to the white hunter, whose name was 
Johnson. A quarrel ensued, and the Indian was 
killed. Whether the murder was committed in the 
heat of a sudden fight, or in cold blood, is not known 
— the forest alone witnessed the bloody transaction : 
yet there, on the shore of that lonely river, sleeps the 
poor savage. A simple wooden cross, erected by some 
of his tribe, stands over the grave, awakening sad 
emotions in the breast of the wanderer. If it were 
on an open bank it would not seem so solitary, 
but surrounded as it is by an interminable forest, it 
looks fearfully forlorn. 

By one of those singular discoveries which so often 
detect the murderer, Johnson was convicted of the 

^ crime. The people of Herkimer County, however, 
claiming him as their criminal, he was tried there 
and acquitted, and carried about the town on men's 

L shoulders. The good Dutchmen of that county had 



238 THE ADIRONDACK. 

suffered so much in former times from the depre- 
dations of the Indians, that they considered the 
man a public benefactor, rather than murderer, 
who slew one. To hang a man for killing an In- 
dian was a monstrous absurdity — they would as 
soon think of punishing him for shooting a rattle- 
snake or wolf. 

You cannot conceive the shock one feels in coming 
on a spot in the forest, where a murder has been com- 
mitted. In the streets of a crowded city, or on 
the highway, all remembrance of the deed is soon 
effaced — changes take place, and the mere fact that 
ten thousand other things have transpired since it 
occurred, serves to weaken the associations connected 
with it, and indeed removes it much farther off. But 
in the still woods, the solitary grave and you are 
alone together. The motionless trunks seem stern 
watchers there ; and you impart a consciousness to the 
sleeper, and imagine that the uneven surface around 
him was made by the fierce death-struggle, and that 
the leaves are yet tinted with his blood, I have often 
thought that a murderer in the heart of a boundless 
forest must feel more restless and wretched than if he 
were in a crowd of men. The suspicious eyes of his 



I 



CONSCIENCE. 239 

fellows could be encountered with far more firmness 
than those of that invisible presence which seems there 
to surround him. There is no way to escape himself 
— nothing to resist or to dare. " The scowl of revenge 
or stare of defiance, may be met, for there is a visi- 
ble object" on which the passions can act ; but to 
struggle with conscience — to hush the awful voice of 
law which Grod's universe about him is thundering in 
his ear, is a hopeless task. 

Near the last of this chain of lakes is a small sheet 
of water called Moose Lake, from its being a favorite 
haunt of moose. Like the first mentioned in the 
group, it is embosomed in trees, but no mountains 
rise from its shores. It has also a beach of incom- 
parable whiteness, and the bottom of the lake looks 
like a vast bed of fine white salt. As you sit in your 
boat, you can see it glittering beneath at an immense 
depth, while ever and anon a huge trout flits like a 
shadow over it. A certain judge and his lady are ac- 
customed in summer to come from the w^estern set- 
tlements, and camp out for two or three weeks at a 
time on its shores, and fish. The lady, accomplished 
and elegant, enjoys the recreation amazingly, and once 
caught herself a trout weighing nineteen pounds. 



240 THE ADIRONDACK. 

There are no islands upon it, but a long green pro- 
montory almost cuts it in two, from which you get an 
entrancinsT view of the whole lake. 

My friend B n, with a hunter, had great sport 

here one day. He did not fish over an hour, and yet 
in that short time, took a hundred and twenty pounds 
of trout, and left them biting as sharp and fast as 
when he began. Groing back through the lake to- 
wards Brown's tract, two moose with their broad- 
spreading horns and huge black forms, were seen 
standing on the shore. They can see to an astonishing 
distance ; and at the first glimpse of the boat, they 
wheeled into the woods and made off*. One, however, 
was killed the next day. Deer were stumbled on al- 
most every half mile. B n said he counted six, 

two of which the rifle of the hunter fetched down. A 
deer seems unable to measure distance correctly on 
the water, or else reasons very poorly on what he sees : 
for if a man will approach noiselessly and without 
changing his posture, he can often, in broad daylight, 
get within fair shooting range. 

To strike through the woods, it is only about five 
miles from the head of this lake to " Brown's tract," 
as it is called, where the signs of civilized life first ap- 



r 



brown's tract. 241 

pear, though it will be a great mistake if when you 
get here you imagine yourself '' out of the ivoods'^ — 
a long road yet remains to be traveled. 

This "tract" receives its name from John Brown, 
formerly governor of Rhode Island. Some fifty years 
ago, he bought two hundred thousand acres here — all 
wilderness — ^with the intention of forming a large set- 
tlement. By presents of land and putting up at his 

< 
own expense, mills and a forge for the manufacture 

of iron, he induced many families to migrate — at 
one time, it is said, there were thirty located in 
this solitary spot. But at that period, there was not a 
single public improvement west of Albany, hence 
there were no facilities for getting to market. Added 
to this, the land was cold and unproductive — ^the win- 
ters long and severe, which so disheartened the set- 
tlers that they one after another left. (jrovernor 
Brown, who had constantly furnished large supplies 
at length died, and then the colony broke up. 

Three thousand acres had been cleared up, which 
now lies a vast common, with only one inhabitant to 
cultivate it. He occupies it without being owner, yet 
pays no rent, and no taxes : the Robinson Crusoe of 
this little territory, he has what he can raise, and no 

n 



242 THE ADIRONDACK. 

one to dispute his domain. The log dwellings of the 
settlers have all rotted away — the mills fallen in upon 
the mill stones, and the forge upon the hammers. 
One house alone, which formerly belonged to the 
agent, remains standing ; and in this Arnold and his 
family reside. Boonville, twenty miles distant, is 
the nearest settlement. Yet here he lives contented, 
year after year, with his family of thirteen children — 
twelve girls and one boy — ^by turns trapping, shooting 
and cultivating his fields. The agricultural part, 
however, is performed mostly by the females who 
plow, sow, rake, bind, &c., equal to any farmer. Two 
of the girls threshed alone, with common flails, five 
hundred bushels of oats in one winter, while their 
father and brother were away trapping for marten. 
Occupying such a large tract of land, and cultivating 
as much as he chooses, he is able to keep a great 
many cattle, and has some excellent horses which 
these girls of his ride with a wildness and recklessness 
that makes one tremble for their safety. You will 
often see five or six of them, each on her own horse, 
some astraddle, and some sideways, yet all " bare 
back :" i. e, without any saddle, racing it like mad 
creatures over the huge common. They sit (I was 



CURIOUS HORSE RACE. 243 

going to say their saddles) their horses beautifully ; 
and with their hair streaming in the wind, and dresses 
flying about their white limbs and bare feet, careering 
across the plains, they look wild and spirited enough 
for Amazons. They frequently ride without a bridle 
or even halter, guiding the horse by a motion or stroke 
of the hand. "What think you of a dozen fearless girls 
mounted on fleet horses, without a saddle, on a dead 
run ? I should like to see them going down Broadway. 
Yet they are modest and retiring in their manners, 
and mild and timid as fawns among strangers. 

There was a lad about nineteen years of age with 

my friend B n, whom one of these girls challenged 

to a race. He accepted it, and they whipped their 
horses to the top of their speed. The barn, nearly a 
mile distant, was to be the goal. Away they went, 
pell-mell — the girl without a saddle, across the field. 
The boy plied the whip lustily, ashamed to be beaten 
by a woman, yet he fell behind, full a hundred yards. 
Mortified at his discomfiture, and the peal of laughter 
that went up, he hung his head, saying it was no 
fault of his, for she had the best horse. She then 
offered to exchange with him, and try the race over. 
This was fair, and he was compelled to accept the 



244 THE ADIRONDACK. 

second challenge. Taking their old station, they 
started again. It would have done a jockey good to 
have seen that stout frontier youth use his whip, and 
beat his horse's ribs with his heels, and heard him 
yell. But all would not do — that girl sat quietly 
leaning over her steed's neck ; and with her low, clear 
chirrup, and her sharp, well-planted blows inspired 
the beaten animal with such courage and speed, that 
he seemed to fly over the groand, and she came out 
full as far ahead as before. The poor fellow had to 
give up beaten, humiliating as it was, and the girl 
with a smile of triumph, slipped the bridle from her 
nag's head, and turned him loose in the fields to 
graze. 

The mother, however, is the queen of all wood- 
man's wives — ^but you must see her and hear her 
talk^ to appreciate her character. If she will not 
stump the coolest, most hackneyed man of the world 
that ever faced a woman, I will acknowledge myself 
to have committed a very grave error of judgment. 

Her husband's ^^ saple line^'' as she termed it, (sable 
line,) that is line of trapping, is thirty miles long, and 
he is often absent on it several days at a time. 

It is thirty miles through the woods to Boonville, 



RETURN ROUTE. 245 

from whence you can easily make your way to 
Rome. 

My next will be on my return route through Forked 
and Long Lakes, and the woods to "Warren County. 

Yours truly. 



xxvn. 



.^\^\/V^'Ny\^N^N^- 



LOST IN THE WOODS ^AN OLD INDIAN AND HIS DAUGHTER 

FAREWELL TO MITCHELL MOSQUITOES AND BLACK 

FLIES. 

In the Woods, August. 
Dear H : 

It was with weary forms and saddened hearts that 
we left this morning our encampment on Forked 
Lake, and turned the prows of our boats homeward. 
A person who has never traveled in the woods, cannot 
appreciate the feelings of regret with which one leaves 
the spot where he has once pitched his tent. The 
half-extinguished firebrands scattered around — the 
broken sticks that for the time being seemed valuable 
as silver forks, and the deserted shanty, all have a 
desolate appearance, and it seems like forsaking trusty 
friends, to leave them there alone in the forest. 

The morning was sombre, and the wind fresh as we 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 247 

pulled down the lake, and again entered the narrow 
river that pierced so adventurously the dark bosom of 
the forest. The fatiguing task of carrying our boats 
was performed over again, with the additional burden 
of a deer we had partially consumed. At one portage 

P , with two rifles and an overcoat as his part of 

the freight, started off" in advance of the rest. We 
were each of us too much engaged with our own af- 
fairs to notice the direction he took ; but supposing, of 
course, he was ahead, pushed on. But as we came to 
the next launching place, he was nowhere to be found. 
*'He has gone on, I guess," said one, ^Ho the next 
carrying place." We shouted, but the echo of our 
own voices was the only reply the sullen woods sent 
back, and one was despatched farther on to ascertain 
whether our conjecture was true. The report was 

soon brought back that P was nowhere to be 

found. I, by this time, began to feel somewhat 
alarmed, for the lost one was my brother, and taking 
Mitchell with me, hastened back towards the spot 
where he had parted from us. I shouted aloud, but 
the deep waterfall drowned my voice, and its mo- 
notonous roar seemed mocking my anxious halloo. I 
then fired my rifle, but the sharp report was fol- 



248 



THE ADIRONDACK. 



lowed only by its own echo. Mitchell then dis- 
charged his, and after listening anxiously awhile, we 
heard a shot far up the river. Soon after, "bang, 
bang," went two more guns in the same direction. 
The poor fellow had heard our shots, and fearing we 
might not hear his in return, and hence take a 
wrong direction in pursuit of him, just stood, and 
loaded and fired as fast as he could. When we 
found him he was as pale as marble, and looked like 
one who had been in a state of complete bewilderment. 
On leaving us, instead of going down stream as he 
should have done, he turned directly up. After 
awhile he came out on the bank of, to him, a strange 
river. As it was on the wrong side to be the one we 
had floated down, he thought he must have crossed 
over to another, but finally concluded it would be the 
safest course to retrace his steps. This he was doing 
to the best of his ability when he heard our rifle shots. 
"We scolded him for his stupidity in thus causing us 
alarm and delay, which, he very coolly remarked was 
neither very just nor sensible, and then trudged on. 

One gets lost in the woods when he least expects it. 
Awhile ago, a man from the settlements, a hunter, 
too, left the shores of Long Lake, with a dog to 



DEATH BY STARVATION. 249 

start a deer on the mountain, for a friend who was to 
watch in the boat. He left his rifle behind him so as 
to cUmb the mountain more easily, but after beating 
about awhile, got lost. Three days after the hound 
came home with a long gash in his side, and in a 
week or so more the body of the master was found on 
the shore of the lake. The dog evidently clung to 
him faithfully, till the man — ^having no gun with 
which to kill game — had endeavored to stab him for 
food. "With this he left him, and the poor wretch 
wandered about, till prostrated by hunger, he laid 
down and died. 

Towards night B n and myself arrived with 

Mitchell at his hut, where he found his aged Indian 
father and young sister waiting his return. '^ Old 
Peter," as he is called, is now over eighty years of 
age. He shakes with the palsy, and is constantly 
muttering to himself in a language half French and 
half Indian, while his daughter scarcely twenty years 
old, is silent as a statue. She is quite pretty, and her 
long hair is not straight like that of her race, but 
hangs in waving masses around her bronzed neck and 
shoulders. She will speak to no one, not even to 
answer a question, except to her father and brother. 



250 THE ADIRONDACK. 

I have tried in vain to make her say no or yes, but 
she invariably turns to her father or Mitchell, and 
makes them answer. This old man still roams the 
forest, and stays where night overtakes him. 

It was sad to look upon his once powerful frame, 
now bowed and tottering, while his thick gray hair 
hung like a huge mat around his wrinkled and 
seamed visage. His tremulous hand and faded eye 
could no longer send the unerring rifle ball to its 
mark, and he was^ compelled to rely on a rusty fowl- 
ing-piece. Everything about him was in keeping — 
even his dog was a mixture of the wolf and dog, and 
was the quickest creature T ever saw move : his very 
gambols frightened me, for when leaping to a caress, 
his bound was so quick and eager, that he seemed 
about to tear me in pieces — indeed it was always a 
dubious matter with me, when I approached him, 
whether he intended to play or fight. 

But poor old Peter cannot stand another winter, I 
fear, — and some lonely night, in the lonely forest, 
that dark-haired maiden will see him die, far from 
human habitations ; and her slender arm will carry 
his corpse many a weary mile, to rest among his tribe. 
As I have seen her decked out with water-lilies, pad- 



INDIAN MAIDEN. 251 

dling that old man over the lake, I have sighed over 
her fate. She seems wrapt np in him, and to have 
but one thought — one purpose of life — to guard and 
nurse her parent. The hour that sees her sitting 
by the camp-fire beside her dead father, will wit- 
ness a grief as intense and desolate as ever visited 
a more cultivated bosom. G-od help her then. I 
can conceive of no sadder sight than that forsaken 
maiden, in some tempestous night, sitting all in the 
forest, holding the dead or dying head of her father, 
while the moaning winds sing his dirge, and the 
flickering fire sheds a ghastly light on the scene. 

How strong is habit. That old man cannot be per- 
suaded to sit down in peace beneath a quiet roof — 
ministered to and cherished as his wants require — but 
still clings to his wandering life, and endures hunger, 
cold, and fatigue, and wanders houseless and home- 
less. He continues to hunt, though his shot seldom 
strikes down a deer ; and he still treads the forest, 
though his trembling limbs but half perform their 
office, and his aged shoulders groan under the burden 
of his light canoe. I saw him looking at a handful of 
specimens of birch bark he had collected, and balanc- 



252 TTTE ADIRO>"DArK. 

ing which to choose as material for a new canoe. He 
still looks forward to years of hunting, and days of 
toil, when the bark of life is already touching those 
dark waters that roll away from this world and all it 
contains. 

Aug. 31. — Yesterday as I was leaving Long Lake, 
I met the old Indian and his daughter just starting on 
their return journey of a hundred and fifty miles. 
The father was sitting in the middle of the bark 
canoe on the bottom, while the daughter occupied the 
stern and paddled the boat. Her head was uncovered, 
and her long hair which almost swept the water, 
was filled with white lilies she had plucked by the 
shore. Noiseless and steady swept on the frail craft, 
impelled by her sinewy arm — stretching down the 
middle of the lake towards the dark outlet. It was a 
sad sight to behold spring and winter thus united, one 
decked out in flowers and the other covered with the 
frosts of time, and know the fate before them. I 
watched their lessening forms till they were a mere 
speck in the distance, and then struck across the 
lake and began my fifty miles stretch through the 
woods. 

Mitchell accompanied us several miles on our way. 



AIOSqUITOES. 



253 



as if loth to leave us. In parting I gave him a canis- 
ter of powder, a pocket compass, and a small spy- 
glass, to keep as mementos of me, and shook his 
honest hand with as much regret as I ever did that of 
a white man. I shall long remember him — he is a 
man of deeds and not of words — kind, gentle, delicate 
in his feelings, honest and true as steel. I would 
start on a journey of a thousand miles in the woods 
with him alone, without the slightest anxiety, al- 
though I carried a million of dollars about my person. 
I never lay down beside a trustier heart than his, and 
never slept sounder than I have with one arm thrown 
across his brawny chest. 

There is one thing I have not mentioned, which 
mars very much a tramp through these woods — I 
mean the mosquitoes and black flies. The latter dis- 
appear about the first of July, but the former are like 
the locusts of Egypt. However, I was troubled less 
than I anticipated — on the lakes the fresh wind drives 
them away, and at night your camp fire keeps them 
off. In the woods of a damp, still morning, or just at 
evening, away from a fire, they assail one by bat- 
talions. Hence, fishing along the inlets or outlets is 
often a protracted agony. I once stood on a rock and 



2o4 



THE ADIRONDACK. 



dragged my fly over a pool so crowded with trout that 
half a dozen would be on the surface at once, and 
yet by the time 1 had taken ten or fifteen, I was 
compelled to fling down my rod and run and scream, 
for the blood was pouring in rivulets from my neck, 
face and hands. If, however, you are where you can 
sit in a boat, by placing some earth in the bottom of 
it, and building a little fire, (a " smudge,") you may 
fish quite comfortably. 

I mention the mosquitoes solely to relieve my con- 
science, so that no one — if any may be tempted here 
by my descriptions — shall say I have deceived him. 
However, I never suffered more from their bite than I 
have on Long Island. A green veil wrapped around 
the face and neck when traveling, is often a great 
protection. 

Sept. 1. The fifty miles of forest were safely 
made, and with a pair of antlers on one side of my 
saddle, and a noble pheasant I shot with my rifle, on 
the other, I landed at an humble dwelling where I 
had left my traps, and was soon accoutered again like 
a civilized man. 

Yours truly. 



XXVIII. 

SCHROON LAKE A NUT FOR SPORTSMEN WOODS ON FIRE. 

ScHRooN Lake. 
Dear H : 

Lake Schroon is some nine miles long, gently wav- 
ing in its shape and dotted with green islands. Some 
have compared it to Lake Como — from one point it 
bears an exact resemblance in shape to the neck of a 
swan. It is a most beautiful sheet of water — the 
shores sloping down to it on one side like those of 
Skaneateles, and a bold mountain kneeling in it on 
the other. At the foot is the residence of Mr. Ben- 
thuysen, commanding one of the finest views I have 
ever seen. The lake here is narrow, and as it half 
encircles the house, it looks like the Hudson River in 
its windings. There could hardly be a more pic- 
turesque situation for a summer residence ; and in 
England it would soon be crowned by a magnificent 



256 THE ADIRONDACK. 

pile of buildings. The lake should be called 
" Scaroon," from a French family that first gave it 
the name — the rapid way of pronouncing it has 
changed it into Schroon. The water is very pure and 
cold, and salmon trout were once found in it in abun- 
dance. Latterly, however, they have become more 
scarce, so four years since some men living on its 
banks got a few pickerel and put them in as a basis 
of a new stock of fish. It was agreed on all hands 
not to take any out for four years. The time being 
expired this spring, they commenced spearing them, 
and the quantities they have caught almost surpasses 
belief. Hundreds of pounds have been taken, some of 
the fish, weighing twelve and thirteen 'pounds. The 
rapidity with which they bred is equalled only by the 
ratio of increase in size, for a growth of four pounds 
per annum in weight is almost incredible. It was 
doubtless owing to the abundance and richness of the 
food and the perfect adaptness of the water to their 
wants and habits. Fish of all kinds are easily 
affected by the place they are in, and the quantity and 
kind of food with which they are supplied. A trout 
kept in a well, though fed ever so bounteously will 
scarcely gain a pound in three years, while I have 



HABITS OF FISH. 257 

seen those that weighed two ounces in June, by hav- 
ing fine food and water, weigh six in August. The 
spawn that run up the cool streamlets into meadows 
where the water is always fresh and filled with 
worms or grasshoppers, will treble their size in two 
months. There is another curious fact about trout 
and pickerel as well as some other species of fresh 
water fish — their size will vary in proportion to the 
magnitude of the pond or lake they inhabit. Thus 
you will find in two lakes in Massachusetts, lying side 
by side — one, a half a mile round, and the other three 
miles, the same fish differing altogether in size. In 
the latter you will take a great many pickerel w^eigh- 
ing three and four pounds, and now and then one 
much larger, while in the former the average weight 
will be from eight to eighteen ounces. 

THE WOODS ON FIRE. 

Last night witnessed a scene of sublimity that 
baffles all attempts to describe it worthily — for the 
forests all around were a mass of surging, tossing, 
billowy flame. I have seen the woods on fire upon 
Long Island, when the flames traveled so rapidly 
that a man on horseback could scarcely, at an easy 



258 



THE ADIRONDACK. 



gallop, keep ahead of them — and it was a grand spec- 
tacle. The vast columns of smoke rolling into the 
heavens, yet leaning eagerly forward, as if straining 
on the chase — the lambent tongues of flame, shooting 
at intervals above the murky mass that hugged the 
tree tops, and the steady roar, like that of the surge, 
filled me with new ideas of terror and sublimity. 
The rabbits and foxes in countless numbers, smelling 
the danger from afar, scoured the thickets in every 
direction — the deer ran frightened from their haunts, 
and nature herself seemed to stand aghast at the fury 
of the devouring element. But the leaves and shrubs 
alone fed the flames — the tall trees were only scathed 
and blackened, which, together with the lowness of 
the land, lessened and concealed the effect of the 
scene. 

A prairie on fire is simply a mass of flame, rush- 
ing like a race horse over the ground — terrible to 
behold, but exhibiting a sameness in its aspect that 
leaves no room to the imagination. But a mountain 
of magnificent timber ablaze is another matter — ^from 
base to ridge your eye takes in the whole extent, and 
you look on a bosom of fire, from which rise waving 
columns and lofty turrets of flame. 



FIRE IN THE WOODS. 259 

There has been a long drought in this section, 
which so dried up everything combustible, that the 
forest became one great tinder box, needing only a 
spark to make a conflagration. This was accident- 
ally furnished by some men burning a fallow. First 
a column of blue smoke began to ascend through 
the trees, which rapidly swelled in size and increased 
in velocity, until at length the fire got under way, and 
took up its fierce march, and by night the whole 
mountam was wrapt in a fiery mantle. It came roar- 
ing down to the clearing where I stood, threatening to 
leap over the narrow barrier, in its eagerness to burst 
all bonds that would restrain it. Trees a hundred 
feet high, and five and six and eight feet in circumfer- 
ence, were on fire from the root to the top — vast pyr- 
amids of flame, now surging in the eddies of air that 
caught them, now bending as if about to yield the 
struggle, then lifting superior to the foe, and dying, 
martyr-like, in the vast furnace. One tree enlisted 
for awhile all my sympathies — it was a noble stem, 
and stood for a long time erect and motionless amid 
the enveloping smoke and flame, sometimes buried 
from my sight and then appearing again — its black 
form looming mysteriously through the murky cloud 



260 



THE ADIRONDACK. 



that shrouded it, as though defying its enemy. Even 
after the blaze had curled itself around the entire 
trunk, and run out to the extreme limits of the 
branches, it still retained its calm and dignified aspect 
— its head, and body, and arrns reaching out into the 
night, all on fire, and yet scorning to show signs of 
pain. At length, however, the heat seemed to have 
reached its vitals, for it suddenly swung backward, as 
if in agony, while a shower of embers fell like sky 
rockets around the blazing outline, to its roots. Shorn 
of its glory, the flashing, trembling form stood thus 
awhile, crisping and writhing in the blaze, till weary 
with its long suffering, it threw itself with a sudden 
and hurried sweep, on the funeral pile around. From 
the noble pine to the bending sprout, the trees were 
aflame, while the crackling underbrush seemed a 
fiery net- work cast over the prostrate forms of the 
monarchs of the forest. When the fire caught a dry 
stub, it ran up the huge trunk like a serpent, and, 
coiling around the withered branches, shot out its 
fiery tongue as if in mad joy, over the raging element 
below ; while ever and anon, came a crash that 
reverberated far away in the gorges — the crash of 
falling trees, at the overthrow of which there went 



MARCH OF THE FLAMES. 261 

up a cloud of sparks and cinders and ashes. Sweeping 
along on its terrible path, the tramp of that confla- 
gration filled the air with an uproar like the bursting 
of billows on a rocky shore. 

In one direction the forest made down into a valley 
through which coursed a rapid stream, on the farther 
side of which arose a mountain of rocks, almost naked 
from base to summit. Trees and shrubs, however, 
had grown in the interstices, but the drought had 
killed them all, and the white and withered stems 
could scarcely be distinguished from the bleached 
rocks against which they grew. 

Along this valley the conflagi-ation swept; and, 
skirting the bank of the stream with fearful velocity, 
and licking up everything to the water's brink ; went 
for a while careering onward as if satisfied with the 
field before it. But suddenly there seemed to be a 
division of the forces — while one portion was content 
with a direct invasion, the other made a halt as if re- 
solved on a more desperate attack. The white, dry 
mountain on the opposite side of the stream had at- 
tracted its attention ; and clearing the channel with 
one bold bound, it began to scale the opposing cliffs. 
As the flames got amongst this vast collection of com- 



262 THE ADIRONDACK. 

bustible matter, they raged with a strength and fury 
to which all their former madness seemed placidity. 
Have you ever in a still summer day heard the roar of 
a coming hurricane ? if so, you have a faint conception 
of the terrific rushing sound of the fire as it wrapped 
those mountains. It was near midnight, and that 
rocky ridge became in the gloom a vast elevation of 
fire — laced with lines of fire of brighter hue, and 
shooting up jets of flame against the murky sky, as if 
resolved to assail the heavens also. As I stood gazing 
on this wild spectacle, and listening to its wilder up- 
roar, suddenly a shrill and distant scream cleaved the 
flames, and was borne with startling clearness through 
the air. Some wild animal, probably a panther, had 
been roused from his sleep by the heat, but awoke 
only to find himself hemmed in on every side by a 
burning wall. Bounding madly from side to side, ho 
had at last sprang into the fire, and that last cry was 
his death shriek. 

This morning, a black and smouldering mass alone 
remains of last night's wild work. Trees half burnt 
in two, others broken off" at the middle, and all 
smoking amidst the devastation, present a most for- 
lorn aspect in the bright morning air. 



NATURE NEVER THE SAME. 263 

The backwoodsman never sees a city on fire, but he 
beholds a far more imposing spectacle. Around the 
haunts of men the devouring element is everywhere 
met by resistance. Not only do solid walls obstruct 
its progress, but human effort fights it at every step, 
subduing its fury and lessening its force. But in the 
woods it has free scope — no arm arrests it — no con- 
finement smothers its rage. Free as the forest it 
ranges, it puts forth all its energy, and is fanned into 
greater fury, by the wind, itself creates. 

Thus, my friend, do scenes of beauty and terror 
succeed each other on the margin and in the heart of 
the wilderness. There is no monotony in nature and 
no lack of excitement. 

Yours truly. 



XXIX. 



LUMBERMEN A STUDENT AND HUNTER OUTWITTED BY A 

PROFESSOR A PHILOSOPHICAL HUSBAND A PROSPEC- 
TIVE WIDOW LOOKING OUT FOR HER OWN INTEREST. 

ScHRooN Lake, August. 

Dear H : 

After the description I have given of the wilder- 
ness and its extent, I seem to hear you inquiring, 
''What do people live on there?" Well, not much of 
anything ; yet money is made in this region — that is, 
out nearer the settlements. You have no conception 
of the quantity of lumber that is taken every winter 
from some part of this vast plateau to Albany. A 
thousand people will be in these woods, where, in the 
summer, there is not a living being. Speculators buy 
the land for the sake of the timber, and then in the 
winter carry in provisions, etc., for the lumbermen 
who are to cut it. Log huts are put up in the shel- 



LUMBERMEN. 265 

tered gorges for themselves and cattle, and some poles 
driven into the logs for bedsteads ; and thus equipped 
and encamped, they lay siege to the pines. Teams 
are made to work, and logs are drawn, where you 
would say it was impossible for cattle to stand. A 
great deal of land is bought of government solely for 
the pine on it ; and after that is cut down, it is al- 
lowed to revert back to the State to pay its taxes. 
In the more central regions, however, there is 
no timber cut, as it is impossible to get it out to mar- 
ket: but as civilization extends, the interior of the 
Empire State will, no doubt, be reached by roads, or 
water navigation. 

Speaking of living, reminds me of an anecdote re- 
lated to me by a professor of mathematics in one of 
our colleges. Sent here for scientific purposes, he took 
with him as a companion a younger brother who had 
just graduated, and an old hunter, for a guide, cook, 
and provider-general. Passing one day a clearing, in 
which some fine peas were growing, they purchased a 
small quantity to give relish to a dinner some time in 
the forest. Not long after, being fatigued by a 
hard forenoon's work, they pitched their camp on 
the borders of a lonely lake, and the professor said, 
12 



266 THE ADIRONDACK. 

" Come, let us have those peas to-day." So while he 
was taking some observations down by the lake, the 
old hunter and the young graduate prepared the din- 
ner. After a while (the professor told me) he no- 
ticed an unusual chuckling between the student and 
the backwoodsman. Suspecting some trickery, he 
strolled quietly up towards the fire, as if endeavoring 
to get a new point of observation, but in fact to watch 
narrowly their proceedings. Supposing that the profes- 
sor was deep in equations and angles and mathemati- 
cal lines, they relaxed their caution, and he observed 
that they were making wooden spoons with their pen- 
knives. All at once it flashed on him that he and 
they had nothing but penknives to eat the peas with, 
and that here was a conspiracy to rob him of his 
share. Saying nothing, he walked back to the lake 
shore, and picking up one of those large muscle shells, 
which are found in all our fresh water lakes and 
rivers, and will hold more than an ordinary spoon, he 
fitted a split stick to it for a handle, and clapped 
them both in his pocket. Then sauntering back in 
order to prevent them making very extensive prepara- 
tions, he kept around, until the dinner was cooked. 
Hi? presence restricted very much their operations, and 



THE professor's DINNER. 267 

they were able to finish but very shallow spoons after 
all. The peas being at length done, they were poured 
into the common dish, and lo ! it was all soup. To 
prevent the possibility of the professor's getting even 
a moiety, they had cooked them so that the peas were 
like Yirgil's " rari nantes in gurgite vasto.''^ 

Imagine them now all seated on the ground around 
their food, each stabbing with his penknife at the 
peas, which dodge under the surface at every 
blow, like frogs when pelted with stones by mis- 
chievous boys. After this ridiculous process had been 
carried on awhile, \o the ill-suppressed merriment of 
the student and hunter, they whipped out their 
wooden spoon:^, and flourishing them over their heads 
with a loud "hurrah," made a dive at the peas. The 
professor said nothing, but coolly drawing forth his 
huge muscle shell and stick, and fitting them together, 
began to ladle up the soup. The hunter and graduate 
stopped in utter amazement at this new development, 
and with their spoons suspended half way to their 
mouths, gazed with blank countenances at the quiet 
professor, who, without uttering a word, or changing 
a feature, diligently plied his shell. By his accurate 
and mathematical mode of ladling, he was enabled to 



268 THE ADIRONDACK. 

take up an enormous quantity at every dip, and in a 
few moments every pea had vanished. The whole 
operation had been carried on with the sobriety with 
which he would have reduced an equation, while the 
hunter and student looked inquiringly at each other, 
yet without venturing a word of expostulation against 
the strange proceeding. When the last pea disap- 
peared, he looked up as much as to say, " Is there any- 
thing more to eat, gentlemen?" This was carrying 
out the joke so capitally that the two conspirators 
were compelled to laugh. The old hunter, as he 
licked his empty spoon, confessed that for once he had 
been outwitted. 

The other day I took a heavy boot to a shoemaker, 
or rather mender^ to be repaired before I set forth on a 
new expedition, of whom I was told a capital anec- 
dote. An English emigrant had settled down, in a 
remote part of the forest, where he cleared a little 
space about him and built a log hut. He had been 
there but a year or two, when one day as he was 
absent in the woods with his eldest daughter, his hut 
took fire and burned down. His wife was sick, but 
she managed to crawl out, taking the straw bed on 
which she lay with her. At evening the husband 



A PROSPECTIVE WIDOW. 269 

returned to find his house in ruins. It was a winter 
night, and the snow lay deep on the ground. Calling 
aloud, he heard a faint voice reply, and going in 
the direction from which it came, found his wife 
stretched on the bed in the snow. Gretting together 
a few boards left from the conflagration, he made a 
shelter over her. That night she was safely deliv- 
ered of a child which survived and is now living. 
But under the exposure and excitement together, 
the husband took a violent cold, which, having 
fastened on his lungs, and being resisted by no medi- 
cal treatment whatever, terminated in the consump- 
tion. He, however, reared another hut, and during 
the summer a young settler came in and purchased a 
tract near by him. His being the only family within 
a long distance, this backswoodsman often passed the 
evening in their society. It was not long before he 
discovered that his neighbor could not long survive, for 
the most ignorant in this region know all the symp- 
toms of pulmonary disease which carries off three- 
fourths of those who die. Accompanying this conclu- 
sion came naturally the reflection, what would become 
of the wife ; and as she was good-looking and indus- 
trious he thought he could not do better than marry 



270 THE ADIRONDACK. 

her himself. Acting on this consideration, he men- 
tioned the matter to her, remarking that her husband 
could not live long, and asking if she would marry 
him after he was dead ? 

She replied that she had no objections at all if " her 
husband was willing.''^ He said he had no doubt on 
that point, and he would speak to him about it. He 
did so, and the husband unhesitatingly gave his con- 
sent, adding that he was glad she would be so well 
provided for after his death. So when winter ap- 
proached, the young settler would come and "court" 
the prospective widow, while the dying husband laid 
and coughed on the bed in the corner. 

Now there was not much sentiment in this, I grant, 
but there was a vast deal of philosophy. It was 
rather cool on her part, to be sure, but vastly sensible 
on his. "What could his wife and children do, all 
alone there in the woods, without a protector ? The 
toughest part of the proceeding, and that which no 
doubt tested the backwoodsman's philosophy the 
severest, was the courtship. To lie gasping for 
breath in one part of the room, and see the young 
athletic and healthy backwoodsman and his wife 
sitting together by the fire, and know that after a few 



PHILOSOPHICAL HUSBAND. 271 

more painful weeks, he would occupy that place per- 
manently, and yet bear it all patiently, required a 
good deal of stamina. Especially must the reflection 
that they were both probably very anxious to have 
him take his departure, have been rather a bitter pill 
to swallow. I go into all these little particulars, you 
know, to show the character of my hero to the best 
advantage — the heroine speaks for herself. These 
two interesting personages were my shoemaker and 
his wife. 

Yours truly, 



XXX, 



ODDS AND ENDS TRIAL OF A THIEF IN THE BACK- 
WOODS NEW MODE OF REPORTING AN ELECTION 

PARADOX LAKE ^VON RAUMER AND HIS STATEMENTS. 



Dear H- 



They have a curious way of disposing of civil and 
political matters in the backwoods ; for they are not 
trammelled by the formalities of law, having imbibed 
the very ridiculous notion that its end is secured by 
the administration of justice. It will be some time, I 
am afraid, before they become sufficiently educated to 
understand that the science of law as reduced to prac- 
tice now-a-days, is based on two great principles — 
first, to give the scoundrel a better chance than the 
honest man — and second, to make technicalities weigh 
against truth and justice. The idea never entered 
their heads, poor souls, that a slight informality 



A THIEF IN THE BACKWOODS. 273 

should always be sufficient to defeat the cause of a 
good man, and advance that of a bad one. 

Being so barbarous as to love simple justice, some 
of their trials are conducted on a singular plan. On 
one occasion, a little settlement of some half a dozen 
families having discovered a thief among their num- 
ber, without farther ado, assembled, tried, and con- 
demned him. The nearest jail, however, was fifty 
miles distant, through the forest : yet they resolved 
to despatch him thither, and two men were appointed 
as his conductors. 

The first day they made about twenty-five miles, 
and then built up a fire and lay down for the night, 
with their prisoner. In the morning, feeling rather 
stiff and lame, they declared that the tramp of a hun- 
dred miles w^as going to cost more than it w^ould come 
to, and so turned him loose in the woods to find his 
way out as he best could. 

I was much amused at a method of voting adopted 

in another settlement composed of a few clearings — 

the only ones in the township — in which w^ere some ten 

or a dozen voters. The candidate for their suffrages 

— I forget his name — lived in Glen's Falls, near 

Saratoga Springs. Having assembled together in 
12=^ 



274 THE ADIRONDACK. 

one of the log huts of the settlers, they talked over the 
matter, and finally concluded to vote all one way, and 
for this gentleman. It was a grave and solemn de- 
liberation, and the sound political maxims there 
uttered were worthy of the momentouso ccasion that 
called them together. Having folded up their some 
dozen votes, they put them in a little wooden box with 
a lid to it, and despatched a man with them eighty 
miles distant to Grlen's Falls, fifty of which were 
through a dense forest. After several days' hard 
traveling, he reached the place ; but instead of going 
to the proper authorities, he went straight to the can- 
didate's house, and opening the box, counted the votes 
saying, " Here, them's all for you — every one of 'em." 
The man laughed, and said that he was much obliged 
for the votes, but they could do him no good, brought 
in this informal way. 

I caught a terrible drubbing in a school house, the 
other day, from a Methodist exhorter. Seeing me 
present, and hearing or surmising that I was from 
New York, he thought it was a good opportunity to 
give his opinion of the inhabitants of that wicked 
city. Among other severe things which he uttered, 
he said the people were so affected that they could 



ASSES AND CRITICS. 275 

not say " Tuesday,''^ but must say " Chuseday^''^ and 
could not say ink, "like a man, but ivritin' fluid.'''' 
I fairly writhed under the scorching rebuke, feeling 
as I often have done under some of the criticisms on 
my books in the Magazines. I have no doubt he also 
felt very much as the writer or penny-a-liner did, 
who concocted those annihilating reviews. It re- 
minded me of an article I once saw in the " New 
Englander," written by an ignorant conceited clergy- 
man, who, irritated by the itching after notoriety, 
was willing to expose his folly, if he only could 
be talked about. I forget the article, but I remember 
one sentence, over which I had a hearty laugh — first, 
at the long ears, which everywhere stuck out, and 
second, at the ludicrous gravity with which I knew 
he contemplated the feat he had performed, while his 
readers were smiling at his stupidity. He was re- 
viewing my " Napoleon and his Marshals," and 
among other defects, (some of which he made up 
deliberately,) he said I used the phrase "deliv- 
ered battle," which was entirely wrong. He con- 
demned it, intimating that it was very corrupt En- 
glish, unscholarlike and vicious'''' — when he ought 
^o have known it was a technical miUfary phrase^ 



276 THE ADIRONDACK. 

for which I was no more responsible than for the 
phrase ^' artillery practice, "^^ or '''•advancing' en eche- 
lon.,'''' and which is perfectly proper, as any, but an 
ignoramus knows. ''Delivered battle!" "very bad 
English" — ah, he said '•' writin' fluid,'''' he did not say 
" inkV So another critic rebuked me for using the 
word " stand-poinf- — ^saying I should have written 
^^ standing point 1 1 V How very small a dog can 
hark ! 

A few miles from the head of Schroon Lake is 
Lake Paradox, which derives its name from the fact 
that its waters flow two ways. Its outlet empties 
into the east branch of the Hudson (i. e.) in ordinary 
times. But when, as it frequently happens in 
the spring, the river suddenly rises even with its 
banks, its surface is above the level of the lake, 
which, of course, swells much slower. The current 
of the outlet is then reversed and flows back into the 
lake. This double motion of the stream has given it 
the name " Paradox." 

BURLINGTON. 

I came across the country to I^ake Champlain, tak- 
ing some fine trout on the way. About six miles 



VON RAUMER. 277 

from Crown Point, I for the first time in my life 
caught a full view of the Grreen Mountains of Ver- 
mont. They were a long way off, but in the bright 
light of the setting sun, their bold outline showed 
beautifully against the clear sky. I was struck with 
the soft, blue coloring over them, like that we so often 
see in Italy, and which is generally thought to be 
peculiar to that country. Burlington is one of the 
most beautiful places on the continent, though I was 
provoked with a remark made by Prof. Yon Raunier 
one day in company with some of the professors of 
the college. He said he had traveled from Boston 
through the Atlantic States to New Orleans, and up 
the Mississippi, through Canada, and back to Ver- 
mont ; and that Niagara and Burlington furnished the 
only scenery that could be called fine he had found in 
all his route. Now so old a traveler as Von Raumer 
ought to be ashamed of such a remark. If he will go 
through the country on railroads and steamboats, at 
the rate of fifteen and twenty miles an hour, he 
should not complain of dearth of scenery. I have 
seen both continents, (not excepting even the Profes- 
sor's favorite G^ermany,) and I affirm that in natural 
scenery the United States stands unrivalled ; and if 



278 THE ADIRONDACK. 

this remark is an index of the book he designs to pub- 
lish about us, I would not give a straw for it. How 
supremely foolish for a man to hurry through the 
country by steam, taking all the lowland in his route, 
and then pretend to write about our scenery. These 
three months' tourists are not the most reliable in the 
world. To add to the Professor's wisdom, he took the 
night boat up the lake. Very likely he went dowrt 
the Hudson by night also. Suppose he had gone up 
by daylight, and across the country from Burlington 
to Boston, and then through Massachusetts and Con- 
necticut to Albany, and down the Hudson on a pleas- 
ant day — every hour would have been crowded with 
rich and varied scenery. 

A man who should visit Switzerland and never go 
into the Oberland or Tyrol, and then say there was no 
scenery in the country that could be called sublime, 
would be deemed insane — but a foreign traveler no 
more thinks of visiting the wild and almost untrodden 
portions of our land, than he does of committing sui- 
cide. He expects to see everything worth seeing, 
without leaving the lines of railroads, or going beyond 
the precincts of good hotels. As well might a man 
give an opinion of the scenery of the Highlands after 



MISTAKES OF TRAVELERS. 279 

passing only from Edinburgh to Grlasgow, as speak of 
that of our country after traveling only on the greai, 
thoroughfares that intersect it. Our gorges are yet 
dark with fir trees, amid which the seeker after 
natural beauty must sleep — our heaven piercing 
mountains encircled by vast forests or broader deserts 
through which he must toil, if he would reach the 
commanding summits. 

Yours truly. 



XXXI. 



AbTUMN A PAINTER MANNER OF WORKING. 



Leaves have their time to fall, 

And flowers to wither at the North wind's breath. 



Dear H- 



No country can compare with ours in the richness, 
at least of its autumn scenery. The mountains of the 
eastern world are not wooded like ours, and hence 
cannot exhibit such a mass of foliage as they present. 
But if you wish to behold autumn in its glory, you 
must stand on some height that overlooks this vast 
wilderness. What seemed to you in summer an inter- 
minable sea of green, becomes a limitless expanse of 
the richest colors — a vast collection of fragmentary 
rainbows. And the different effects of light on dif- 
ferent portions is most astonishing. Here a moun- 
tain blazes in splendor, and there a valley looks like a 
kaleidoscope — just so variegated and confused. 



THE DYh\G VEAK. 281 

Autumn has been written and rhymed about from 
the days of Thomson down, but always in the same 
general tone of sadness. The text of every one has 
been — 

" The melancholy days have come — 
The saddest of the year," 

There must be something natural in this, or it would 
not be so universal ; and my own experience has 
heretofore corresponded with this prevailing senti- 
ment. Indeed the effect of the dying year is palpable 
on those least affected by such changes and least con- 
scious of them. You notice it in the very sports of 
children. In spring time the most vigorous games 
and boisterous merriment are seen on every village 
green. But in autumn these are thrown aside for 
forest strolls or walks by the river side. The scene 
subdues and chastens the very spirit of childhood ; 
and there is something sad in seeing the glorious 
summer, that has been so full of life and health and 
beauty, lie down and die on the bosom of Nature. 
Hope, which comes with spring, yields in autumn to 
reflection, and man looks forward to decay rather 
than to maturity and strength. But this feeling 



282 THE ADIRONDACK. 

becomes deeper and sadder as one enters the forest 
and hears the leaves rustlmg to his tread, and the 
sound of the squirrel cracking the nuts amid the 
dying tree-tops. 

The trees have a melancholy aspect about them — 
they appear to be conscious that their glory is depart- 
ing ; and every leaf, as it loosens itself from the stem 
where it has nodded and swayed the livelong summer 
^ in joy, and flutters to the earth, seems to lie down as 
a sad memorial of the departing year. 

But for once in autumn I have had none of these 
feelings. Roaming through this glorious region, and 
along the foot of these mountains, I have seen summer 
die as I never saw it die before. There has been a 
beauty and brightness and glory about the changing 
foliage this year, I never before witnessed. No 
drenching rains faded the colors before their time, and 
amid the clear weather and slight frosts, the summer 
has died like the dolphin, changing from beauty to 
beauty ; and Autumn, the usually sober, serious, 
sober Autumn, has seemed the most frolicsome fellow 
of all the year. Stand in one of these deep valleys, 
and look around you on the shores and hill-slopes and 
mountain ridges ! Autumn, with his brush and 



THE FOREST IN AUTUMN. 283 

colors, has been painting with the most reckless 
prodigality and in endless variety of beauty and 
brightness. There is no end to his whims and con- 
ceits — the changed landscape seems the work of one 
in his most joyous, frolicsome mood. There stands a 
single maple tree ; Autumn approached it last night, 
and apparently from a mere whim, threw his brush 
over the top, making it a scarlet red one third of the 
way down, while the other portion he left green as in 
its spring-time. He simply put a red cap on it and 
passed on. On another, he has run his brush along a 
single limb, which flashes out from the deep bosom of 
green in singular contrast. Yonder is an open grove 
which he has hurried through, touching here and 
there a tree with his reckless brush, till it is spotted 
up with all the colors of the rainbow. He has 
painted one all yellow, another all red, a third left 
untouched, and a fourth sprinkled over with a shower 
of colors, as if he had simply shaken his brush over 
it in mirth. 

He has brought out colors where you never dis- 
covered anything but barrenness before. A yellow 
wreath is running along a rock and festooning a tree, 
where yesterday was only an humble unseen vine. 



284 THE ADIRONDACK. 

He has painted it in a single niglit. He has trod the 
gloomy swamp also, and lit up its solemn arcades 
with brightness and beauty. The bushes that lifted 
themselves modestly beside the dark fir trees, un- 
noticed before, he has touched with his pencil, while 
the evergreens, which he always avoids, stand in their 
native greenness — and lo, a yellow lake is spread 
under their sombre tops, as if a flood of molten 
gold had suddenly been poured through them. He 
has tipped the bush that dips the water with his 
pencil, and lo, the liquid mirror blushes with the re- 
flection at morning. Like a giant he has stood at the 
base of the sky-seeking mountain, and swept his brusli 
with a bold stroke all over its forest-covered sides, till 
it fairly dazzles the eye as the evening sunbeams flood 
it. There, where the ridges stoop into a long steady 
slope, he has wrought on a grander scale. The 
different nature of the soil has given birth to several 
varieties of timber, which lie like so many separate 
strata for miles along the mountain side ; and here he 
has swept his brush in long stripes of yellow and red 
and green and gold, till acres on acres of carpeting 
spread away on the vision, while here and there sepa- 
rate clumps of trees have been touched with varif^.- 



AUTUMN HUES. 285 

gated hues to serve as figures in the magnificent 
ground work. It is astonishing how well Autumn 
understands the effect of light, especially as he works 
so much in the dark. But there, on the bold spur of 
that hill, right where the sunlight falls at evening 
through a gorge in the western range, he has laid on 
his richest and most gorgeous colors. And when the 
western sky is melting and flowmg into fluid gold, and 
the glowing orb of day is swimming in its own splen- 
dor as it sinks to rest, it pours its full brightness upon 
that already bright projection, till it is converted into 
a throne of light. 

Thus does this frolicsome Autumn roam abroad, 
with brush and colors in hand, obeying no law but 
that of beauty. But while he paints on such a grand 
scale, and with such long sweeps, and so rapidly, too, 
finishing millions of acres in a single night, he omits 
none of the details. Each leaf is as carefully shaded, 
and as delicately touched as if miniature painting was 
his only profession. 



xxxu. 



DIRECTIONS TO THE TRAVELER. 

There are several routes to the region described in 
the foregoing letters. One goes by way of Lake 
Greorge, where you take a wagon to Chester and 
Schroon Lake. From this point you can go either to 
Long Lake, or the Adirondack Iron Works. 

Another is by way of Westport on Lake Champlain, 
where you take a wagon to Elizabethtown. At the 
latter place, as at Chester on the other route, you will 
obtain all the information necessary as to the best 
way of getting into the woods. 

A third route goes by way of Keysville. Launch- 
ing your boats on the Saranac River, you pass up it, 
carrying your boat around rapids — sailing through 
beautiful lakes, until at length you cross over to Ra- 
quette River up which you can wind your tedious way 
day after day until you reach Raquette Lake. 



DIFFERENT ROUTES. 287 

On the western side you start from Rome and go to 
Boonville, thence to Brown's tract, where you take 
boats for the Raquette, &c. There is another route 
still, leading in on the southern side from New Am- 
sterdam, the particulars of which I am unacquainted 
with. 

In passing through this region, one should never 
wander from his guide, for it does not require more 
than a mile's aberration sometimes to lose one effectu- 
ally. Neither should he, even with his guide, depart 
far from the water courses, for it is almost impossible 
to get through the woods. The quantities of fallen 
timber scattered throughout the forest in every direc- 
tion — huge trees lying across each other, presenting 
an endless succession of barricades and impenetrable 
thickets, arrest the traveler at every step. A direct 
line cannot be pursued, and a man might work hard 
all day and not make ten miles' progress. And more 
than this, away from the lakes and streams you are 
not sure of game, especially on the higher grounds. 
These mountains are silent as the grave — the owl 
perchance being the only bird you will see in a day's 
tramp. It is true, deer, bear, wolves, panthers, and 
moose roam over them, or retire to their summits to 



288 THE ADIRONDACK. 

take the cool air and escape the flies of the lower 
grounds, but you make such a thrashing among the 
branches, both green and dry, that they are off, long 
before you come in sight of them. These forests are 
so dense that you can see but a short distance ahead. 
A good rifle, a knife, three or four shirts, and a blan- 
ket or overcoat, making a package of only a few 
pounds weight, must be all that you take with you — 
for, in the first place, your rifle weighs from eight to 
twelve pounds, and in the second place, you are often 
compelled to carry that of your guide also, together 
with a tin kettle, perhaps, or pan which you need 
in cooking. Over the portages he can carry only the 
boat, and it would be a great waste of time to com- 
pel him to go back after the traps. Your guide must 
have also a little sack of Indian meal with which to 
make Johnny-cakes. A small bit of pork is likewise 
desirable to fry your trout with. Thus equipped, 
with a good pair of legs under you, a spirit not easily 
discouraged, and a love for the wild, and free, you 
can have a glorious tramp — enjoy magnificent scenery 
— catch trout and kill deer to your heart's content, 
and come back to civilized life a healthier and a bet- 
ter man. 



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